EXCHANGE 


THE  PRINCIPLE  OF 

INDIVIDUALITY  IN  THE  PHILOSOPHY 

OF  THOMAS  HILL  GREEN 


A  THESIS 

PRESENTED  TO  THE  FACULTY  OF  THE  GRADUATE  SCHOOL 

OF  CORNELL  UNIVERSITY  FOR  THE  DEGREE  OF 

DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


BY 

HARVEY  GATES  TOWNSEND,  A.B, 


PRESS  OF 

THE  NEW  ERA  PRINTING  COMPANY 
LANCASTER.  PA. 


THE  PRINCIPLE  OF 

INDIVIDUALITY  IN  THE  PHILOSOPHY 
OF  THOMAS  HILL  GREEN 


A  THESIS 

PRESENTED  TO  THE  FACULTY  OF  THE  GRADUATE  SCHOOL 

OF  CORNELL  UNIVERSITY  FOR  THE  DEGREE  OF 

DOCTOR  OF  PHILOSOPHY 


BY 


HARVEY  GATES  TOWNSEND,  A.B. 


PRESS  OF 

THE  NEW  ERA  PRINTING  COMPANY 
LANCASTFK.  PA. 


PREFACE. 

IN  this  monograph  no  attempt  will  be  made  to  deal  with 
Green's  ethical  or  political  theories,  the  purpose  being  rather  to 
examine  and  define  the  deeper  lying  metaphysical  principles  of 
which  his  ethical  and  political  philosophy  is  but  the  expression. 
Such  an  aim  is  in  keeping  with  the  spirit  of  Green's  philosophy, 
for  he  himself  tells  us  that  a  metaphysic  of  morals  is  "the  proper 
foundation,  though  not  the  whole,  of  every  system  of  Ethics" 
(Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  sec.  2.)  It  is  common  enough  to  deny 
that  there  is  any  vital  connection  between  ethics  and  meta- 
physics, and  this  opinion  was  probably  just  as  common  when 
Green  wrote  as  it  is  today,  as  the  Introduction  to  the  Pro- 
legomena clearly  shows.  With  the  arguments  again  which  may 
be  brought  in  support  of  either  side  of  this  question  the  present 
study  is  not  concerned;  for  however  such  a  controversy  may 
eventuate  in  the  abstract,  we  are  not  at  liberty  when  we  discuss 
Green's  ethics  to  neglect  his  own  view  of  the  matter.  For  if 
he  believed,  as  he  most  certainly  did,  that  his  ethics  was  inti- 
mately and  organically  bound  up  with  his  metaphysics,  we 
would  be  greatly  increasing  our  chances  of  failure  to  understand 
his  ethics  by  a  refusal  to  study  his  metaphysics.  A  lack  of 
deep  appreciation  of  the  metaphysics  has,  I  believe,  vitiated  a 
great  deal  of  the  criticism  of  the  later,  and  perhaps  more  dog- 
matic parts  of  Green's  system.  Taking  the  position  that  he 
did,  he  had  a  right  to  assume  that  his  reader  would  become 
familiar  with  his  metaphysics  and,  in  case  of  a  disagreement, 
that  the  discussion  would  embrace  a  consideration  of  meta- 
physical principles  rather  than  confine  itself  to  a  disputation 
about  rules  of  morality  from  the  uncritical  or  factual  stand- 
point of  ordinary  life.  It  is,  therefore,  of  the  greatest  importance 
for  the  understanding  of  Green's  philosophy  that  we  first  become 
acquainted  with  the  principles  of  his  metaphysics. 

Green's  social  theory,  which  includes  the  application  of  his 
philosophy  to  moral,  political,  educational,  or  religious  situa- 

iii 


399565 


IV  PREFACE. 

tions,  reveals  throughout  a  philosophic  or  speculative  motive. 
He  was  not  one  of  those  who  seem  content  to  live  from  hand  to 
mouth  in  philosophy,  lost  in  the  flux  of  experience  as  it  comes; 
but  he  was  above  all  anxious  to  'see  life  steadily  and  to  see  it 
whole.'  A  fragment  was  never  to  him  a  mere  piece  of  something  • 
or  other  to  be  accepted  unreflectingly,  but  it  was  a  challenge 
which  set  his  mind  to  reconstruct  the  concrete  whole  of  which  it 
is  a  part,  and  it  led  him  ultimately  to  a  view  of  the  whole  uni- 
verse. It  is  this  motive  in  his  philosophy  with  which  we  are 
here  concerned.  What  did  he  do  toward  exhibiting  the  unity 
and  variety  of  experience?  (This  is,  of  course,  to  be  distin- 
guished from  the  question  sometimes  asked,  Is  there  any  unity 
in  experience?  If  there  is  to  be  any  immediate  datum  of  con- 
sciousness the  unity  is  unquestionably  as  immediate  as  the 
variety.)  In  a  word,  the  question  is  not,  Is  the  world  one  or 
many?  But,  How  is  the  world  one  and  many?  This  question 
is  as  old  as  the  history  of  philosophy  and  has  been  uniformly 
looked  upon  as  a  question  of  a  fundamental  kind.  "If  I  find 
any  man,"  says  Socrates,  "who  is  able  to  see  unity  and  plurality 
in  nature,  him  I  follow  and  walk  in  his  steps  as  if  he  were  a  God" 
(Phaedrus,  266.)  The  purpose  of  the  following  discussion, 
therefore,  is  to  set  forth  Green's  metaphysic  of  the  one  and  the 
many,  as  given  in  his  treatment  of  the  individual,  introducing 
only  as  much  illustrative  material  and  application  as  is  neces- 
sary to  hold  fast  the  central  idea. 

The  individual  may  be  defined  at  once  as  the  concrete  em- 
bodiment of  particularity  and  universality,  that  is  to  say,  the 
individual  is  both  one  and  many.  We  shall  follow  Green's 
attempt  to  explain  the  category  of  individuality  and  to  apply  it 
successively  to  the  object,  the  subject,  and  finally,  to  the  uni- 
verse as  a  whole,  conceived  as  a  subject-object  complex.  As  a 
basis  for  such  a  study  it  seemed  wise  to  begin  with  an  examination 
-of  the  problem  and  method  of  Green's  metaphysics  in  order  to 
dispel  a  misunderstanding  regarding  his  position  on  these  points 
which  has,  I  think,  stood  in  the  way  of  a  correct  interpretation 
of  his  entire  system  of  philosophy. 

I  am  grateful  to  Professor  J.  E.  Creighton  and  to  other  mem- 


PREFACE.  V 

bers  of  the  faculty  of  the  Sage  School  of  Philosophy  for  criticism 
and  guidance  in  the  preparation  of  this  monograph,  and  to  my 
wife  for  valuable  assistance  in  verifying  references  and  reading 
proof. 

NORTHAMPTON,  MASS., 
August  3,  1914. 


TABLE  OF  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

PREFACE iii 

CHAPTER  I.     The  Problem  and  Method  of  Green's  Meta- 
physics    I 

CHAPTER  II.     The  Individuality  of  the  Object 18 

CHAPTER  III.     The  Implications  of  Objectivity 35 

CHAPTER  IV.     The  Individuality  of  the  Subject 46 

CHAPTER  V.     God:  The  Complete  Individual 67 

INDEX 91 


Vll 


THE  PRINCIPLE  OF  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  THE 
PHILOSOPHY  OF  THOMAS  HILL  GREEN 


CHAPTER   I. 

THE   PROBLEM   AND   METHOD   OF   GREEN'S   METAPHYSICS. 

"ABOUT  Locke,  as  about  every  other  philosopher,  the  essen- 
tial questions  are,  What  was  his  problem,  and  what  was  his 
method?"1  Thus,  at  the  beginning  of  his  introduction  to 
Hume,  Green  expressed  his  idea  of  the  true  way  to  study  a 
system  of  philosophy.  Three  years  later  he  wrote:  "When 
we  understand  what  the  questions  exactly  were  that  a  philosopher 
put  to  himself,  and  how  he  came  to  put  them  as  he  did,  we  are 
more  than  half-way  towards  understanding  the  answer."2  In 
undertaking  a  serious  examination  of  a  fundamental  conception 
of  Green's  philosophy  we  can  do  no  better  than  to  follow  the 
spirit  expressed  in  the  above  words,  for  if  these  statements  are 
true  regarding  any  philosophy  they  are  peculiarly  true  of  Green's. 
He  was  a  pioneer  in  England  of  the  form  of  thought  commonly 
known  as  German  Idealism.  He  broke  away  from  the  common- 
sense  method  of  English  Empiricism  and  substituted  for  it 
a  logical  criticism  almost  if  not  quite  as  subtle  and  as  unusual 
as  that  of  Hegel  himself.  His  thought  was  a  reaction  against 
the  dominant  empiricism  of  his  day  and  especially  against  the 
loose  and  hasty  application  of  biological  theory  to  metaphysical 
and  ethical  questions.  Although  his  treatment  of  evolution 
shows  that  he  grasped  the  real  significance  as  well  as  the  limita- 

1  Works  of  Thomas  Hill  Green,  edited  by  R.  L.  Nettleship.     Longmans,  Green, 
and  Co.,  1885.     Vol.  I,  p.  5.     (Hereafter  referred  to  merely  by  volume  and  page.) 
The  essay  in  which  the  quotation  occurs  was  first  published  in  1874  as  an  intro- 
duction to  Hume's  Treatise  of  Human  Nature  in  an  edition  of  Hume's  Works 
edited  by  T.  H.  Green  and  T.  H.  Grose. 

2  III,  134. 

I 


2  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

tions  of  Darwin's  results,  we  must  remember  that  he  wrote  in 
reply  to  evolutionary  theory  without  the  help  of  the  great  body 
of  literature  to  which  the  modern  writer  can  appeal.1  The 
theory,  moreover,  was  then  in  its  crudest  form  and  not  so  free 
from  careless  generalizations  as  it  is  today.  Green's  language 
seems  to  be  at  times  unsympathetic  or  even  hostile  toward  the 
evolutionary  method  and  results  partly  because  we  forget  the 
distinction  between  early  and  more  recent  forms  of  evolutionary 
theory ;  but  largely  because  the  reader  does  not  understand  what 
the  questions  exactly  were  that  Green  "put  to  himself  and  how 
he  came  to  put  them  as  he  did."  It  is,  therefore,  fitting  to 
begin  with  an  examination  of  his  problem  and  his  method.2 

The  form  as  well  as  the  content  of  Green's  question  resembles 
that  of  Kant,  'How  are  synthetic  judgments  a  priori  possible?' 
Green  declares  that  the  primary  question  of  metaphysics  is, 
'How  is  knowledge  possible?1  In  explanation  he  adds:  "  It  is  not 
to  be  confused  with  a  question  upon  which  metaphysicians  are 
sometimes  supposed  to  waste  their  time — '  Is  knowledge  possible?' 
.  .  .  Metaphysic  is  no  such  superfluous  labor.  .  .  .  It  is  simply 
the  consideration  of  what  is  implied  in  the  fact  of  our  knowing  or 
coming  to  know  a  world,  or,  conversely,  in  the  fact  of  there  being  a 
world  for  us  to  know.1'3  He  believes,  moreover,  that  this  is  the 
universal  problem  of  metaphysics,  common  not  only  to  the 
German  Idealists,  but  to  Locke,  Berkeley,  and  Hume.  He  com- 
plains that  the  English  philosophers  of  his  day,  unlike  Kant,  had 
been  unable  to  read  the  "movement  of  speculation,  which  issued 
in  Hume's  Treatise"4  with  an  understanding  mind;  so  that, 
instead  of  "putting  the  metaphysical  problem  in  its  true  and 
distinctive  form,"  they  had  lost  it  outright  and  were  even  con- 
gratulating themselves  on  being  "wise  enough  to  drop  meta- 
physics betimes  and  occupy  themselves  with  psychology."5 

1  He  recognized  in  evolutionary  theory  a  "  valuable  formulation  of  our  knowledge 
of  animal  life,"  but  he  also  saw  clearly  that  it  was  not  fitted  for  "the  explanation  of 
knowledge."     I,  385. 

2  Cf.  Edward  Caird,  "  Idealism  and  the  Theory  of  Knowledge,"  Queen's  Quarterly, 
XII,  105. 

*  I,  374.     Italics  mine. 

4 1,  375- 

6  Ibid.  What  he  understood  by  psychology  and  why  he  rejected  the  psycho- 
logical method  will  appear  as  we  proceed. 


PROBLEM  AND    METHOD    OF  GREEN'S   METAPHYSICS.     3 

In  an  age  which  was  flooded  with  'scientific  facts'  from  all 
sides  and  in  which  the  sciences  seemed  to  be  vying  with  each 
other  in  gathering  data,  Green  did  not  hope  to  discover  any  new 
fact.  Science  was  everywhere  asking,  'What  are  the  facts?'; 
he  was  asking,  '  What  is  a  fact? '  For  the  rational  statement  of 
his  problem  it  was  by  no  means  necessary  that  the  deliverances 
of  physics,  or  biology,  or  psychology  should  be  true,  but  merely 
that  they  should  claim  to  be  true.  His  interest,  like  Kant's,  was 
to  discover  the  rational  basis  of  science  or  knowledge ;  and  toward 
the  understanding  of  this  problem  the  specific  results  of  any 
particular  science  could  contribute  but  little.  The  matter  of 
first  importance  for  Green  was  not  to  prove  or  disprove  this  or 
that  scientific  law,  but  to  show  that  scientific  law  is  possible  only 
on  certain  assumptions  regarding  the  nature  of  reality  in  general. 
In  keeping  with  this  he  seldom  or  never  questions  the  results  of 
science  as  such.1  He  was  wise  enough  to  accept  its  results  as 
infinitely  better  than  any  a  priori  guesswork  of  philosophers  and 
theologians.2  Science,  however,  is  totally  distinct  from  phi- 
losophy, in  this:  it  "takes  for  granted  just  what  metaphysic,  as  a 
theory  of  knowledge,  seeks  to  explain."3  The  question  at  issue 
between  metaphysic  and  a  science  should  not  be  looked  upon  as 
one  "between  two  coordinate  sciences,  as  if  a  theory  of  the 
human  body  were  claiming  also  to  be  a  theory  of  the  human  soul, 
and  the  theory  of  the  soul  were  resisting  the  aggression.  The 
question  is,  whether  the  conceptions  which  all  the  departmental 
sciences  alike  presuppose  shall  have  an  account  given  of  them 
or  no."4 

In  opposition  to  the  tendencies  of  his  own  day  to  treat  psy- 
chology as  a  universal  science  which  could  answer  all  questions, 
Green  lays  great  emphasis  on  the  distinction  between  meta- 
physics and  psychology.  The  problem  of  all  critical  philosophy 
is  to  search  out  the  foundations  of  knowledge,  whereas  psy- 

1  To  be  sure  he  protested  against  advancing  the  results  of  science  in  answer  to 
metaphysical  or  ethical  questions. 

»C/.  1,384  f. 

3 1,  164.  Green  always  treats  psychology  as  one  of  the  sciences  and  consequently 
refers  to  it  along  with  others  in  the  quotation.  Cf.  I,  373. 

« I,  164. 


4  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

chology  deals  with  the  facts  of  individual  psychic  experience. 
Psychology  can  hardly  be  said  to  raise  general  questions  of 
validity  and  much  less  to  answer  them.  The  psychologist  treats 
mind  as  his  field  of  investigation  in  much  the  same  way  as  the 
botanist  deals  with  plants.  Both  seek  facts  which  may  be 
observed  and  tabulated,  without  being  in  the  least  concerned  to 
know  what  the  existence  of  facts  implies  regarding  the  nature  of 
the  whole  of  reality.1  Green  did  not  question  the  facts  of 
psychology  (which  he  understood  to  be  concerned  with  the 
phenomena  of  the  mental  life)  any  more  than  he  questioned  the 
facts  of  biology;  for  his  was  a  further  question  concerning  the 
presuppositions  of  any  science  which  deals  with  facts.  He  does 
not,  for  instance,  suppose  that  the  teaching  of  "our  best  psycho- 
logists" that  the  knowledge  we  possess  "results  from  the  pro- 
duction of  feeling  in  us  by  the  external  world"  is  false.2  It  is 
especially  noteworthy  that  he  does  not  attempt  to  show  that 
knowledge  has  had  a  miraculous  birth  or  to  dispute  its  relation 
to  the  animal  organism  and  the  physical  order.  The  following 
quotation  will  make  clear  his  position  on  this  point:  "If  the 
alternative  really  lay  between  experience  and  ready-made  unac- 
countable intuition  as  sources  of  knowledge;  if  the  point  in  dis- 
pute were  whether  theories  about  nature  should  be  tested  merely 
by  logical  consistency  or  experimentally  verified — whether  sub- 
jective beliefs  should  be  put  in  the  place  of  objective  facts,  or 
brought  into  correspondence  with  them — the  experientialists 
would  be  entitled  to  all  the  self-confidence  which  they  show. 
That  the  question  does  not  so  stand,  they  can  scarcely  be  ex- 
pected to  admit  till  their  opponents  constrain  them  to  it;  and 
in  England  hitherto,  whether  from  want  of  penetration  or  under 
the  influence  of  a  theological  arriere  pensee,  their  opponents  have 
virtually  put  the  antithesis  in  the  form  which  yields  the  experi- 

1  See  Green's  distinction  between  Kant's  problem  and  that  of  psychology,  I, 
384.  The  literature  on  the  meaning  of  Kant's  problem  is  far  too  extensive  and 
well  known  to  require  citations  here,  but  it  may  be  worth  while  to  refer  to  two 
characteristic  illustrations  of  it.  Andrew  Seth,  "Philosophy  as  Criticism  of 
Categories,"  found  in  the  volume,  Essays  in  Philosophical  Criticism,  edited  by 
Andrew  Seth  and  R.  B.  Haldane  (1883);  Edw.  Caird,  The  Critical  Philosophy  of 
Kant,  Vol.  I,  Chapter  I. 

2 1,  376. 


PROBLEM  AND    METHOD    OF  GREEN'S   METAPHYSICS.     5 

entialists  such  an  easy  triumph.  Both  sides  are  in  fact  beating 
the  air  till  they  meet  upon  the  question,  What  constitutes  the 
experience  which  it  is  agreed  is  to  us  the  sole  conveyance  of 
knowledge?  What  do  we  mean  by  a  fact?  In  what  lies  the 
objectivity  of  the  objective  world?"1 

In  spite  of  the  care  which  Green  has  taken  to  distinguish  his 
question  from  that  of  the  sciences  in  general  and  from  that  of 
the  science  of  psychology  in  particular  there  has  been  a  singular 
confusion  regarding  the  nature  of  his  problem.  The  real  ques- 
tion, What  are  the  implications  of  the  possibility  of  knowledge? 
is  taken  to  mean,  What  are  the  psychological  facts  of  my  indi- 
vidual consciousness?2  As  a  consequence  of  this  misappre- 
hension of  his  problem  some  of  Green's  critics  persist  in  an 
attempt  to  convict  him  of  wrong  conclusions  regarding  the  latter 
question,  although  we  have  no  evidence  that  he  undertook  or 
cared  to  answer  it.  It  is  quite  surprising  to  find  a  recent  writer 
begin  his  criticism  by  classing  Green  as  one  of  the  "modern 
psychologists."3  Nor  is  this  mistake  confined,  as  might  be 
supposed,  to  those  who  reject  Green's  general  conclusions.  Mr. 
W.  H.  Fairbrother,  a  sympathetic  and  enthusiastic  interpreter  of 
Green's  philosophy,  has  fallen  into  the  same  strange  misrepre- 
sentation of  its  problem  and  method.  He  declares  that  the 
"two  primary  questions"  of  Green's  metaphysics  are,  "What 
are  the  facts  of  my  own  individual  consciousness?"  and,  "What 
is  the  simplest  explanation  I  can  give  of  the  origin  of  these  facts?  "4 
It  would  be  difficult  to  formulate  two  questions  less  repre- 
sentative of  the  spirit  and  purpose  of  Green,  since  he  is  neither 
directly  interested  in  the  facts  of  his  own  individual  conscious- 
ness nor  in  the  origin  of  those  facts. 

"The  basis  of  practice,"  writes  one  of  Green's  critics,  "can 
hardly  be  disclosed  by  a  study  of  cognition.  Still  less  can  this 
be  looked  for  when  knowledge  is  interpreted  with  neglect  of  its 

1 1.  385. 

J  Considering  the  number  of  times  that  this  distinction  of  questions  has  been 
made  since  the  publication  of  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  it  ought  to  be  uncalled 
for  now  in  a  discussion  of  critical  idealism.  That  it  is  not  uncalled  for  cannot 
better  be  illustrated  than  by  these  criticisms  of  Green. 

8  G.  S.  Fullerton,  Psychological  Review,  Vol.  IV,  p.  8. 

4  The  Philosophy  of  Thomas  Hill  Green  (1896),  p.  14. 


6  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

dynamic  and  purposive  implications."1     Would  the  author  of  the 
Prolegomena  to  Ethics  recognize  his  metaphysics  when  described 
as  "a  study  of  cognition?"     This  phrase  taken  by  itself,  would 
suggest  that  Green  is  supposed  to  be  trying  to  found  ethics  on  a 
psychological  introspection  of  his  own  mind  rather  than  upon  a 
critical  examination  of  the  logical  implications  of  knowledge. 
But  the  last  sentence  of  the  quotation  quite  clearly  indicates 
the   fundamental   misinterpretation   of   Green's   question   upon 
which  Mr.  Sturt's  criticism  proceeds.     In  this,  as  in  the  general 
context,  the  critic  seems  tacitly  to  identify  a  study  of  cognition 
with  an  analysis  of  knowledge.     And  this  becomes  still  more 
apparent  when  we  read:  "The  idols  that  beset  Green's  philosophy 
are,  .  .  .  Intellectualism  and  Subjectivism."2     Now  the  charge 
of  intellectualism,  although  it  is  not  directly  concerned  in  the 
present    discussion,    is    particularly    inappropriate    to    Green's 
philosophy.     A  careful  examination  of  the  Prolegomena  to  Ethics 
will  show  that  no  writer  in  modern  times  has  had  a  firmer  grasp 
of  the   "dynamic  and   purposive  implications  of   knowledge" 
than  has  Green.     The  charge  of  subjectivism,  however,  more 
clearly  illustrates  the  almost  total  misapprehension  of  Green's 
problem  and  method.     Mr.  Sturt  seems  to  believe  that  Green 
was  trying  to  spin  the  world  out  of  his  own  abstract  subjective 
experience ;  but  Green  has  actually  forestalled  this  charge  by  his 
clear  distinction  between  the  psychological  subject,  with  which 
he  is  not  directly  concerned,  and  the  subject  of  knowledge,  with 
which  he  is  concerned.     "It  is  important  not  to  confuse  the 
relation  of  subject  and  object,"  he  writes,  "with  the  relation  of 
matter  to  the  psychical  organism.     It  is  a  common  delusion  that 
one  sort  of  phsenomena  are  'subjective,'   another  'objective.' 
In  truth,   'mental  phenomena'  are  just  as  objective  as  any, 
phsenomena  of  matter  just  as  subjective  as  any.     If  mind  and 
matter  =  two  orders  of  phaenomena,  they  do  not  =  subject  and 
object,  for  subject  and  object  are  correlative  factors  of  everything 
as  known."3     Here  as  elsewhere  he  insists  that  he  is  not  con- 
cerned with  the  individual  processes  of  knowing,  but  with  "what 

1  Henry  Sturt,  Idoli  Theatri  (1906),  p.  227. 

2  Ibid.,  p.  211. 

»  II,  181  (note).     Cf.  I,  387. 


PROBLEM  AND    METHOD   OF  GREEN'S   METAPHYSICS.     7 

is  implied  in  the  fact  of  our  knowing,"  or  in  the  "fact  of  there 
being  a  world  for  us  to  know."  Not  only  did  he  protest  em- 
phatically against  substituting  subjective  whims  and  fancies  for 
objective  facts,  as  will  later  appear  in  the  discussion  of  conscious- 
ness, but  he  approached  the  whole  problem  of  philosophy  with  a 
particularly  strong  aversion  for  a  subjective  method.  Sub- 
jectivism, in  whatever  form  it  appeared,  brought  forth  his 
determined  opposition,  but  it  was  the  subjectivism  of  the  tradi- 
tional method  of  English  philosophy  upon  which  his  attack  was 
most  persistent  and  effective. 

Other  writers  who  do  not  explicitly  label  Green  as  a  psycholo- 
gist, nevertheless,  treat  him  as  such.1  The  radical  distinction 
which  he  makes  between  the  problem  of  metaphysics  and  that 
of  psychology  seems  to  be  forgotten.  If  the  distinction  is  un- 
warranted the  critic  should  devote  himself  to  the  task  of  showing 
that  there  are  no  intelligible  questions  beyond  those  which  psy- 
chology raises;  if  it  is  warranted  it  should  be  maintained.  The 
distinction  in  question  may  or  may  not  be  permanently  valid. 
It  is  at  least  permanently  significant  in  an  account  of  Green's 
philosophy.  The  psychology  of  his  day  claimed  to  be  one  of  the 
natural  sciences  and  to  have  adopted  the  problems  and  methods 
of  natural  science.  Green  was  willing  that  psychology  should 
be  accepted  at  its  own  estimate  and  persistently  treated  it  in  that 
light.  As  one  of  the  natural  sciences  he  believed  that  it  could 
properly  raise  and  answer  questions  of  analysis,  origin,  or  other 
relation.  The  question  which  Green  raised,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  consistently  called  metaphysical  and  is  sharply  and  em- 
phatically differentiated  from  scientific  problems  in  general  and 
from  psychological  problems  in  particular.  Effective  criticism 
of  Green's  philosophy  must  be  metaphysical  and  must  at  least 
discuss  his  statement  of  the  problem  of  metaphysics.  Since  the 
only  problem  he  tries  to  answer  is  a  metaphysical  one  it  is  mani- 
festly unfair  and  unconvincing  to  treat  him  explicitly  or  im- 
plicitly as  a  psychologist. 

1  Cf.  G.  F.  Stout's  attempt  to  refute  a  phase  of  Green's  metaphysics  by  intro- 
spective analysis,  in  Mind,  N.  S.  IX,  p.  iff.;  A.  J.  Balfour,  Mind,  IX,  86  ff.; 
A.  E.  Taylor,  The  Problem  of  Conduct,  p.  71  ff.  The  content  of  these  objections  is 
not  necessarily  introduced  here.  I  merely  refer  to  them  as  fair  examples  of  at- 
tempts to  criticize  Green  from  the  psychological  viewpoint. 


8  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

Green  fully  believed  that  the  problem  he  had  chosen  was 
one  common  to  all  modern  philosophy.  In  particular,  he  had 
satisfied  himself  that  English  empiricism  had  been  groping  after 
a  statement  of  the  same  problem ;  but  he  was  equally  certain  that 
his  method  differed  completely  from  that  of  his  fellow  country- 
men. The  method  which  he  attributed  to  them  was  the  psycho- 
logical, by  which  he  meant  essentially  what  psychologists  mean 
today  by  introspection.  That  the  workings  of  the  mind  could 
be  made  an  object  of  knowledge  Green  did  not  question.  Psy- 
chology, he  writes,  has  "a  region  where  it  is  truly  independent  of 
metaphysical  questions,  .  .  .  but  this  region  .  .  .  has  definite 
limits."1  On  the  other  hand,  the  question  confronting  the  meta- 
physician, and  which  the  psychologists  cannot  evade,  "concerns 
the  object  of  knowledge,  and  must  be  answered  before  the  subjec- 
tive process  can  be  investigated."2  The  question,  "What  are  the 
conditions  implied  in  the  existence  of  such  an  object?"  demands 
an  answer  as  a  "necessary  prolegomenon  to  all  valid  psychology."3 

In  the  Introduction  to  Hume's  Treatise  of  Human  Nature  the 
author  takes  great  pains  to  point  out  the  fallacy  involved  in 
attempting  to  solve  a  metaphysical  problem  by  looking  within 
one's  'own  breast.'  Locke's  plan  of  looking  within  his  own 
mind  to  see  "how  it  wrought,"  however  valuable  for  certain 
purposes,  is  quite  inadequate  as  a  method  of  metaphysics.4 
Indeed,  the  whole  of  the  Introduction  might  be  looked  upon  as  an 
attempt  to  show  that  Hume's  scepticism  was  the  necessary 
outcome  of  adopting  this  method  of  'looking  within.'5  The 
weakness  inherent  in  British  empiricism  was  due,  according  to 
Green,  not  to  the  fact  that  it  had  asked  the  wrong  questions, 
but  that  it  had  taken  a  hopeless  method  of  answering  them. 
There  is,  indeed,  no  contention  more  often  advanced  throughout 
his  writings  than  that  it  is  absolutely  futile  to  try  to  answer  an 
ultimate  metaphysical  question  by  appeal  to  particular  facts. 
This  general  proposition  applies  as  well  in  the  case  of  psychical 

1 1,  375. 

2  I,  377.     Marginal  note. 
31,377-     Cf.  II,  21. 
*Cf.  I,  170;  I,  121 ;  I,  375. 
•I,  6. 


PROBLEM  AND   METHOD   OF  GREEN'S   METAPHYSICS.     9 

facts  as  in  the  case  of  physical  facts.  No  enumeration  of  the 
subjective  facts  of  consciousness  can  explain  the  consciousness 
of  facts,  any  more  than  an  enumeration  of  objective  facts  can 
explain  or  unify  the  world.  It  is  no  answer  to  the  question,  How 
is  experience  of  facts  possible?  to  point  out  the  facts  of  experi- 
ence. We  inquire  into  the  implications  of  the  existence  of  fact 
and  are  presented  with  an  alphabetical  catalogue  of  facts.  We 
ask  for  bread  and  receive  a  stone. 

The  method  which  Green  proposed  to  use  was  critical  rather 
than  empirical.  That  is,  it  was  essentially  the  method  of  Kant; 
although  Green  objected  to  the  use  of  the  term  'transcendental,'1 
probably  because  of  the  danger  of  being  misunderstood.  Kant's 
use  of  the  term  had  justly  laid  him  open  to  severe  criticism. 
There  is  something  in  this  terminology  which  smacks  of  the 
' extra-experiential,'  and  it  was  precisely  this  error  which  Green 
was  seeking  to  avoid.  His  object  was  to  discover  an  immanent 
principle  of  organization  within  experience,  not  a  world  of 
'things  by  themselves'  beyond  it.  Kant  sought  the  a  priori 
conditions  of  experience ;  Green  the  logical  implications  of  experi- 
ence. The  difference  in  terminology,  however,  should  not  blind 
us  to  the  similarity  of  the  two  methods.  Both  philosophers  are 
really  interested  in  getting  beyond  the  mere  immediacy  of  a 
given  experience  to  what  Kant  would  call  a  'synthetic  judg- 
ment.' How  shall  we  have  any  significant  judgment  unless  we 
can,  in  some  sense,  get  beyond  a  mere  'given'?  This  question 
came  to  both  Kant  and  Green  with  great  force ;  but  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  now  safe  to  say  that  neither  Kant  nor  Green  was 
really  hunting  for  that  chimera — a  super-experiential  reality.2 
Green  was  well  aware  that  Kant's  world  of  '  things  by  them- 
selves' was  an  impossible  and  absurd  abstraction,  but  he  believed 
that  such  a  world  was  not  the  necessary  result  of  the  Kantian 
method.  The  world  of  bare  things  was  a  mere  aberration  due 
to  the  formal  way  in  which  Kant  conceived  the  mind,  not  the 

1  H.  Sidgwick,  Mind,  N.  S.,  X,  18  f. 

1  Unless  we  understand  experience  in  its  narrowest  psychological  significance. 
Cf.  "Mr.  Lewes'  Account  of  Experience"  Green's  Works,  I,  442  ff.  The  "only 
valid  idealism"  is  defined  in  this  essay  as  "that  idealism  which  trusts,  not  to  a  guess 
about  what  is  beyond  experience,  but  to  analysis  of  what  is  within  it."  Ibid.,  449. 


10  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

essential  outcome  of  the  critical  method.  Indeed,  so  far  is  this 
from  being  the  true  outcome,  that  it  is  to  the  critical  method  alone 
that  we  must  look  for  the  correction  of  the  fallacy  involved. 
Kant,  as  Green  thought,  had  discovered  the  only  possible  basis 
from  which  the  real  futility  of  a  search  for  a  world  beyond 
possible  experience  could  be  shown.  Green,  therefore,  accepted 
Kant's  attempt  to  analyze  experience  or  knowledge  as  a  final 
statement  of  the  method  of  philosophy;  but  it  was  this  very 
method  which  led  him  to  abandon  'things-in-themselves,' 
together  with  Kant's  formal  schema  of  the  categories  and 
faculties.  Before  we  can  proceed  to  Green's  analysis,  however, 
we  must  seek  an  answer  to  the  question,  What  did  he  mean  by 
the  experience  which  he  proposes  to  examine? 

It  is  doubtful  whether  any  philosopher  ever  imagined  himself 
to  be  dealing  with  anything  else  but  experience,  yet  the  word  is 
subject  to  most  extravagant  and  ambiguous  use.1  The  issue 
became  especially  clouded  when  the  British  philosophers  took 
the  word  as  a  shiboleth  of  true  philosophy  and  as  mark  of  dis- 
tinction from  continental  thought,  which  was  falsely  supposed 
to  be  dealing  with  some  other  world.  But  as  Green  says,  "  It  is 
not  those,  we  know,  who  cry  Lord,  Lord!  the  loudest,  that 
enter  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  nor  does  the  strongest  asser- 
tion of  our  dependence  on  experience  imply  a  true  insight  into 
its  nature."2  Any  experience  which  is  to  yield  knowledge  "must 
not  be  merely  an  experience  in  the  sense  in  which,  for  instance, 
a  plant  might  be  said  to  experience  a  succession  of  atmospheric 
or  chemical  changes,  or  in  which  we  ourselves  pass  through  a 
definite  physical  experience  during  sleep  or  in  respect  of  the 
numberless  events  which  affect  us  but  of  which  we  are  not  aware. 
Such  an  experience  may  no  doubt  gradually  alter  to  any  extent 
the  mode  in  which  the  physical  organism  reacts  upon  the  stimulus. 
It  may  be  the  condition  of  its  becoming  organic  to  intellectual 
processes,  but  between  it  and  experience  of  the  kind  which  is  to 
yield  a  knowledge  of  nature  there  is  a  chasm  which  no  one, 
except  by  confusion  of  speech,  has  attempted  to  fill.  Or  to 
speak  more  precisely,  between  the  two  senses  of  experience  there 

1  Cf.  R.  B.  C.  Johnson,  Princeton  Studies,  Vol.  I,  No.  3,  p.  10. 
*  I,  291. 


PROBLEM  AND   METHOD   OF  GREEN'S   METAPHYSICS.       II 

is  all  the  difference  that  exists  between  change  and  consciousness 
of  change.  Experience  of  the  latter  kind  must  be  experience  of 
matters  of  fact  recognized  as  such.  .  .  .  For  this  reason  an 
intelligent  experience,  or  experience  as  the  source  of  knowledge, 
can  neither  be  constituted  by  events  of  which  it  is  the  experience, 
nor  be  a  product  of  them."1  Passages  of  this  kind,  which  are 
not  uncommon  in  Green's  writings,  help  to  throw  light  on  the 
question,  How  is  experience  possible?  He  means  significant 
experience,  that  is,  "matters  of  fact  recognized  as  such."  The 
experience,  therefore,  of  which  Green  is  seeking  a  rational 
account,  is  conscious  or  intelligent  experience;  but  conscious 
experience  is  experience  of  an  object  by  a  subject.  Such  an 
experience,  not  constituted  by  feelings  (psychical  events)  but  by 
judgments,2  and  therefore,  necessarily  involving  subject  and 
object,  is  the  kind  of  experience  in  which  "the  object  has  no  real 
existence  apart  from  the  subject  any  more  than  the  subject  apart 
from  the  object."3 

While  this  definition  of  experience  in  terms  of  the  subject- 
object  complex  does  not  distinguish  Green  from  other  idealistic 
philosophers,  his  method  of  analyzing  the  complex  is  more 
peculiarly  his  own.  Although  he  believes  that  a  careful  examina- 
tion of  either  one  of  these  two  distinguishable  but  inseparable 
factors  within  experience  would  necessarily  involve  and  reveal 
the  nature  of  the  other,  he  prefers  to  begin  by  a  study  of  the 
object.  "A  theory  of  consciousness,  to  be  worth  anything,"  he 
says,  "must  rest  on  an  examination  of  objects."4  This  point  is 
of  the  utmost  importance  and  is  a  distinguishing  characteristic 
of  Green's  idealism.  In  a  suggestive  review  of  John  Caird's 
Introduction  to  the  Philosophy  of  Religion,  which  Green  wrote  a 
little  less  than  two  years  before  his  death,  he  states  his  objection 
to  Hegelianism  in  unambiguous  language.  Admitting  that 
Hegel's  conclusion  is  "the  last  word  of  philosophy,"5  he  still 
feels  much  dissatisfied  with  the  method  which  Hegel  used  in 

1  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  sections  15,  16. 

*  Cf.  I,  448- 

« I,  522.     Cf.  I,  141. 

*I,483.      C/.  1,3775    II.  21. 
•Ill,  141. 


12  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

obtaining  it.  He  has  an  "uneasy  sense  that  it  is  little  likely  to 
carry  conviction."  "When  we  think  out  the  problem  left  by 
previous  inquirers,"  he  continues,  "we  find  ourselves  led  to  it 
[i.  e.,  Hegel's  doctrine]  by  an  intellectual  necessity;  but  on 
reflection  we  become  aware  that  we  are  Hegelian,  so  to  speak, 
with  only  a  fraction  of  our  thoughts — on  the  Sundays  of  specu- 
lation, not  on  the  weekdays  of  ordinary  thought."1  He  con- 
cludes that  Hegel's  results  need  to  be  "put  in  a  form  which 
will  command  some  general  acceptance,"  for  "we  suspect  that 
all  along  Hegel's  method  has  stood  in  the  way  of  an  acceptance 
of  his  conclusion,  because  he,  at  any  rate,  seemed  to  arrive  at  his 
conclusion  as  to  the  spirituality  of  the  world,  not  by  interrogating 
the  world ,  but  by  interrogating  his  own  thoughts"2 

Green  constantly  shows  throughout  his  writing  that  he  prefers 
to  begin  in  an  objective  fashion  with  an  examination  of  the  object 
of  knowledge.  Even  in  the  Prolegomena  to  Ethics,  where  he 
would  be  most  expected  to  interrogate  the  subject  rather  than 
the  world,  nearly  half  of  the  first  book  is  given  up  to  a  discussion 
of  the  'Spiritual  Principle  in  Nature,'  which  is  essentially  an 
examination  of  the  objective  phase  of  experience.  We  must  not 
be  misled  by  the  phrase  'Spiritual  Principle'  into  supposing  that 
Green  is  treating  nature  as  even  quasi-subjective.3  Nature 
means  for  him  the  world  of  phenomena,  that  is,  the  objective 
aspect  of  experience;  and  the  spiritual  principle  refers  merely 
to  the  necessary  interrelation  and  organization  of  the  objective 
world,  through  which  each  thing  is  limited  and  constituted  by 
all  others — through  which  the  objective  world  is  a  cosmos 
Nevertheless,  this  characteristic  bias  of  Green's  method  is  easily 
overlooked  if  we  confine  our  study  solely  or  largely  to  the  ethics. 
For,  inasmuch  as  ethics  deals  with  persons,  it  is  quite  natural 
that  the  emphasis  should  there  be  given  to  the  subjective  aspect 
of  experience.  Moreover,  Green  did  not  pretend  to  stop  with 
an  interrogation  of  the  objective  world,  but  only  to  begin  with  it. 
In  order  to  understand  the  full  value  of  his  choice  of  method 

*  ibid. 

*  III,  146.     Italics  mine. 

8 For  Green  the  opposite  of  'natural'  is  not  'supernatural,'  but  'spiritual'; 
'supernatural'  being  a  "mere  phrase  to  which  no  reality  corresponds."  Ill,  265. 


PROBLEM  AND    METHOD    OF  GREEN'S   METAPHYSICS.       13 

it  is,  therefore,  advisable  to  turn  from  the  ethics,  which  was  the 
culmination  of  his  thought,  to  his  earlier  and  more  strictly 
logical  writings. 

He  who  would  grasp  the  full  significance  of  Green's  examination 
of  the  object  must  first  of  all  totally  abandon  the  Kantian 
'thing-in-itself,'  and  accept  the  obvious  implications  which  such 
an  abandonment  carries  with  it.  Foremost  among  these  impli- 
cations is  the  doctrine  that,  since  reality  is  composed  of  possible 
objects  of  experience,  a  true  account  of  experience  will  also  be  a 
true  account  of  reality.  Or,  to  put  the  matter  in  less  ambiguous 
terms,  Green  would  say  that  true  knowledge  is  knowledge  of 
reality.  As  one  writer  puts  it:  "Knowledge  professes  to  be 

, f 

knowledge  of  reality ;  and  thus  if  we  raise  the  question  '  How  is 
knowledge  possible'?  or  even  the  sceptical  question  'Is  know- 
ledge possible  at  all?'  we  are  ipso  facto  dealing  with  the  question 
'What  is  reality — the  only  reality  we  can  know  or  intelligently 
talk  about?'"1  We  find  this  thesis  in  the  writing  of  Green 
repeated  in  one  way  or  another  with  tiresome  iteration;  but  it 
is  only  fair  to  remember  that  it  was  not  so  generally  accepted 
when  Green  wrote  as  it  is  now.  The  basis  for  such  a  conclusion 
was  definitely  laid  in  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason,  but  it  did  not 
become  explicit  until  the  later  idealists  had  disentangled  the 
positive  from  the  negative  results  of  Kant's  work.  Strictly 
speaking  it  was  not,  perhaps,  until  Hegel  that  philosophy  was 
consciously  ready  to  abandon  '  things-in-themselves '  and  to  look 
for  an  answer  to  its  question  within  rather  than  beyond  experi- 
ence. Green  quotes  Hume  to  the  effect  that  "the  double  exist- 
ence of  perceptions  and  objects  is  a  gratuitous  fiction  of  phil- 
osophers, of  which  vulgar  thinking  is  entirely  innocent,"  and 
remarks  that  Hume  builded  better  than  he  knew;  for  although 
the  statement  is  inconsistent  with  Hume's  own  principles,  it  is  a 
true  account  of  the  intimate  relation  between  thought  and 
reality.2  He  declares  that  contradictions  "under  whatever 
disguise,  must  attach  to  every  philosophy  that  admits  a  reality 
either  in  things  as  apart  from  thought  or  in  thought  as  apart 

1  D.  G.  Ritchie,  Philosophical  Review,  III,  17. 

2  Cf.  I,  261. 


14  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

from  things,  and  only  disappear  when  the  thing  as  thought  of, 
and  through  thought  individualized  by  the  relations  which 
constitute  its  community  with  the  universe,  is  recognized  as 
alone  the  real."1  Earlier  in  the  same  essay  we  read:  "Of  the 
real  as  outside  consciousness  nothing  can  be  said;  and  of  that 
again  within  consciousness,  which  is  supposed  to  represent  it, 
nothing  can  be  said."2 

It  is  a  common  supposition  that  one  or  more  qualities  belong 
to  the  object  in  its  own  right,  but  that  the  others  are  added  by 
the  mind,  and  that  when  the  latter  are  stripped  off  there  still 
remains  the  unknown  existence  of  the  thing.  Green's  criticism 
of  this  view  is  clearly  implied  in  his  rejection  of  'things-in- 
themselves'  and  in  his  thoroughgoing  belief  that  all  objects  are 
objects  of  knowledge.  Even  if  one  could  be  credulous  enough  to 
accept  the  statement  that  things  unknown  are  unrelated  (on  the 
authority  of  a  speaker  who  belies  his  own  words  by  forming  a 
judgment  about  these  hypothetical  reals),  one  would  still  be 
puzzled  to  know  or  even  to  imagine  what  truth  the  statement 
could  have  or  how  it  differed  in  the  least  from  falsehood.  Green 
is  inclined  to  treat  this  contention  as  the  uncertain  attempt  of 
careless  thinking  to  state  the  ground  for  a  distinction  between 
truth  and  falsehood,  but  put  in  such  a  way  that  it  conveys  no 
meaning.  But  may  we  not  at  least  suppose  that  there  is  such 
an  unknown,  unrelated  thing  corresponding  to  our  idea  even 
though  we  can  know  nothing  about  it?  Probably  Green  would 
^admit  that  we  may  suppose  anything  we  like,  but,  as  he  con- 
tends on  another  occasion,  that  which  is  a  mere  possibility  does 
-not  exist.3  Locke,  for  instance,  treats  the  supposition  that 
vthere  is  a  mere  body  to  correspond  to  the  given  idea,  not,  to  be 
^sure,  as  knowledge,  but  as  "an  assurance  that  deserves  the 
name  of  knowledge."4  Upon  this  distinction  of  Locke's  between 
knowledge  and  assurance  Green  comments  as  follows:  "To  seek 
escape  from  this  dilemma  by  calling  the  consciousness  of  the 

11 1,  141. 
12 1,  71. 

•*  HI,  221  ff. 

4  Quoted  by  Green  (I,  48)  from  Locke's  Essay  concerning  Human  Understanding, 
Book  IV,  Chapter  II,  Sec.  14,  and  XI,  3. 


PROBLEM  AND    METHOD   OF  GREEN'S  METAPHYSICS.        15 

agreement  in  question  an  assurance  instead  of  knowledge  is  a 
mere  verbal  subterfuge.  There  can  be  no  assurance  of  agree- 
ment between  an  idea  and  that  which  is  no  object  of  consciousness 
at  all.  If,  however,  existence  is  an  object  of  consciousness,  it 
can,  according  to  Locke,  be  nothing  but  an  idea,  and  the  question 
as  to  the  assurance  of  agreement  is  no  less  unmeaning  than  the 
question  as  to  the  knowledge  of  it.  The  raising  of  the  question 
in  fact,  as  Locke  puts  it,  implies  the  impossibility  of  answering  it. 
It  cannot  be  raised  with  any  significance,  unless  existence  is 
external  to  and  other  than  an  idea.  It  cannot  be  answered  unless 
existence  is,  or  is  given  in,  an  object  of  consciousness,  i.  e.,  an 
idea."1 

There  is  no  place  in  Green's  philosophy  for  speculations  about 
what  may  be  possible  in  some  land  of  day  dreams.  The  business 
of  philosophy  does  not  permit  holiday  excursions  into  the  region 
of  myth.  The  only  objects  with  which  speculation  can  deal  are 
knowable  objects,  i.  e.,  objects  vitally  connected  with  subjects. 
This  is  sure  to  suggest  that  all  of  Green's  profession  to  deal  first 
with  the  object  was  but  a  pretext  to  conceal  his  underlying 
subjectivism;  for  no  sooner  does  he  mention  the  object  than  he 
becomes  involved  in  a  discussion  of  thought.  Does  he  not 
straightway  give  up  his  contention  that  a  true  theory  of  con- 
sciousness must  be  founded  on  an  examination  of  the  object  by 
thus  declaring  that  consciousness  and  its  object  can  never  be 
separated?  This  criticism  may  appear  plausible  at  first  sight; 
but  upon  closer  scrutiny  it  turns  out  to  be  unjustified,  since 
Green's  assumption  is  one  that  lies  at  the  root  of  all  criticism. 
He  simply  articulates  the  presupposition  of  all  theories  of  ob- 
jectivity, namely,  that  a  proposal  to  deal  with  the  object  as  a 
thing  abiding  alone  is  a  suicidal  method.  His  declaration  means 
simply  that  the  statements  which  he  is  about  to  make  concerning 
the  object  are  serious,  and  at  least  not  hopeless,  attempts  to  get 
at  the  real  object,  rather  than  empty  guesses  forever  beyond 
verification. 

That  all  objects  are  objects  of  consciousness  or  knowledge  is 
not  synonymous  with  the  claim  that  we  can  know  nothing  beyond 

1  I,  49- 


1 6  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

our  states  of  consciousness,  or,  as  Locke  would  say,  that  knowledge 
is  concerned  with  'the  agreement  and  disagreement  of  our  ideas.'1 
Indeed,  it  is  the  very  refutation  of  such  a  doctrine;  for  as  Green 
puts  it,  "It  is  quite  a  tenable  position  to  deny  that  an  object 
is  a  state  of  consciousness,  and  yet  to  hold  that  only  for  a  thinking 
consciousness  has  it  any  reality."2  It  would  be  just  as  true  and 
just  as  false  to  maintain  that  we  can  know  nothing  which  is  not 
beyond  our  states  of  consciousness.  Both  of  these  extreme  state- 
ments are  false  because  each  implies  a  fundamental  separation 
between  consciousness  and  its  object.  The  truth  is  more  nearly 
approached  when  we  give  up  all  such  antitheses  and  cease  to 
talk  of  the  object  as  it  is  known  as  even  implicitly  opposed  to 
the  object  as  it  is  not  known.  We  should  content  ourselves  with 
a  discussion  of  the  object  of  knowledge — the  only  object  there  is. 
Indeed,  the  expression  'object  of  knowledge'  is,  for  Green,  re- 
dundant except  in  so  far  as  it  serves  to  exhibit  the  fallacy  of  the 
'thing-in-itself.' 

The  conclusion  thus  far  reached  is  that  Green's  philosophy  is 
best  understood  when  looked  upon  as  a  reaction  against  the  classic 
British  school  of  Locke,  Berkeley,  and  Hume.  He  objected  to 
breaking  experience  up  into  atomic  parts  and  dealing  with  those 
parts  as  independent  reals.  Such  an  abstract  procedure  resulted, 
he  believed,  in  Hume's  denial  of  the  possibility  of  knowledge. 
It  was  this  situation  which  led  Kant  to  inquire  "How  is  expert 
ence  possible?",  and  it  was  this  situation  modified  by  the  results 
of  Kant's  work  which  was  the  point  of  departure  for  Green's 
speculation.  The  problem  which  Green  undertook  to  solve 
closely  resembles  that  of  Kant;  indeed,  in -form  and  substance 
the  metaphysical  questions  of  the  two  philosophers  are  identical.3 

1  An  Essay  concerning  Human  Understanding,  Bk.  IV,  Ch.  I,  Sec.  2. 

2  I,  423.     Cf.  I,  141;  II,  73,  212  ff.     Contrast  with  this  statement  of  Green's 
that  of  Alfred  Barratt,  one  of  his  older  contemporaries  at  Oxford:  "Thus  we  have 
seen  from  every  point  of  view  that  all  that  we  can  know  is  ourselves,  and  that 
every  hypothesis  that  we  can  frame  is  nothing  but  an  extension  of  ourselves. 
Hence  on  the  one  hand,  we  perceive  the  futility  of  Metaphysics  or  Ontology,  which 
is  in  truth  nothing  but  an  Agnoiology,  a  Non-Science  of  Ignorance."     Physical 
Ethics  (1869),  p.  360.     In  this  connection  notice  may  also  be  taken  of  Bradley's 
statement  that  to  be  real  is  to  be  indissolubly  one  thing  with  sentience.     Appear- 
ance and  Reality  (1893),  p.  146. 

3C/.  D.  G.  Ritchie,  Contemporary  Review,  LI,  p.  843;  also  Mark  Pattison, 
Memoir,  p.  167. 


PROBLEM  AND    METHOD    OF   GREEN'S   METAPHYSICS.       17 

There  is,  however,  a  considerable  difference  in  their  respective 
methods  and  results.  The  lapse  of  time  between  the  publication 
of  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  and  the  middle  of  the  nineteenth 
century  had  served  to  modify  the  formalism  of  Kant's  critical 
procedure  so  that  it  had  become  at  once  more  critical  and  more 
plastic.  The  non-essential  parts  of  Kant's  method,  such  as  the 
separation  of  the  phenomenal  from  the  noumenal,  the  form  from 
the  matter  of  experience,  and  the  rigid  table  of  categories  had 
been  purged  away.  The  essential  method  of  searching  out  the 
principles  of  organization  within  experience  remained,  however, 
and  was  epitomized  in  the  persistent  question  "How  is  experience 
possible?"  Such  a  question,  according  to  Green,  does  not 
involve  a  discussion  as  to  whether  or  not  experience  is  possible, 
nor  yet  a  psychological  account  of  the  origin  of  experience  by 
means  of  sensation  or  otherwise.  By  experience  Green  means 
"matters  of  fact  recognized  as  such,"  and  by  an  examination  of 
such  an  experience  he  hoped  to  discover  the- constitution  of 
reality  through  which  experience  is  possible.  Jn  his  examination 
he  chose  to  begin  in  a  purely  objective  fashion  with  a  study  of  the 
object.  He  objected  to  beginning,  as  he  believed  Hegel  had 
begun,  with  an  examination  of  his  own  thought;  but  would  in- 
stead inquire  into  the  nature  of  thought's  object.  It  is  to  be 
remembered,  however,  that  he  distinctly  proposes  to  deal  with 
thought's  object;  not  with  an  hypothetical  object,  as  it  might  be 
carelessly  supposed  to  exist,  independent  of  thought.  When 
Green  abandoned  the  Kantian  '  thing-in-itself '  he  gave  up,  once 
and  for  all  time,  the  hope  of  getting  outside  of  experience  to  a 
realm  of  independent  reals  untouched  by  thought.  Such  a  posi- 
tion is  not,  however,  synonymous  with  the  contention  that  we 
can  know  nothing  beyond  our  states  of  consciousness;  for  states 
of  consciousness  themselves  are  objects  of  knowledge.  The  rela- 
tion of  objects  to  psychic  states  and  the  relation  of  objects  to 
knowledge  are  fundamentally  different.  All  objects  whatever 
are  objects  of  knowledge. 


CHAPTER   II. 

THE    INDIVIDUALITY   OF    THE   OBJECT. 

WHETHER  Green  is  discussing  logic,  ethics,  politics,  education, 
or  religion  one  idea  controls  his  thought.  This  idea  is  that  our 
philosophical  and  social  theory  must  be  founded  upon  a  broad 
and  adequate  notion  of  the  individual.  Green's  life  work  may 
be  properly  characterized  as  an  emphatic  and  sustained  protest 
against  the  abstract  particular,  and  an  attempt  to  substitute  for 
the  particular  the  true  notion  of  the  individual.  He  probably 
did  more  than  any  one  else  in  England  to  point  out,  what  is  now 
generally  recognized,  that  the  besetting  sin  of  British  phi- 
losophy was  its  tendency  to  treat  experience  as  a  sum  of  atomic 
parts.  The  often  quoted  remark  that  Hume  failed  to  see  the 
forest  for  the  trees  has  fixed  this  criticism  in  the  minds  of  many 
who  do  not  know  that  it  was  Green  who  first  had  the  patience  to 
work  it  out  in  detail.  Yet  it  was  largely  through  his  efforts  in 
defining  the  nature  of  the  individual  that  British  speculation  was 
saved  from  being  lost  in  the  abyss  of  Hume's  scepticism. 

Green  particularly  objected  to  the  fallacy  of  the  abstract 
particular  as  it  was  expressed  in  the  logic  and  metaphysics  of 
his  generation.  The  theories  of  knowledge  which  had  been 
developed  in  England  had  resulted,  as  Green  believed,  in  a  general 
denial  of  the  possibility  of  knowledge.  The  reason  for  this  out- 
come was  to  be  sought  in  the  philosophy  of  Locke,  whose  original 
assumptions  Hume  had  but  developed  to  their  necessary  con- 
clusion. If  we  start  with  unconnected  '  bits  of  knowledge  stuff ' 
we  shall  never  get  beyond  them,  for  no  true  account  of  knowledge 
can  be  given  on  the  supposition  that  it  originates  in  that  which 
is  not  knowledge.  Whatever  metaphysics  had  survived  the 
failure  of  a  theory  of  knowledge  had  survived,  as  might  be  ex- 
pected, in  a  common-sense  revolt  against  scepticism.  At  least 
the  majority  of  those  who  rejected  Hume  were  satisfied  to  base 
their  objections  on  uncriticized  metaphysical  assumptions,  the 

18 


THE   INDIVIDUALITY  OF   THE   OBJECT.  19 

very  assumptions,  in  fact,  from  which  scepticism  had  resulted. 
While  they  revolted  at  Hume's  conclusions  they  were  unwilling 
to  abandon  Hume's  premises  as  found  in  Locke.  Nor  could  any 
other  result  be  hoped  for  until  the  movement  from  Locke  to 
Hume  should  be  reviewed  by  a  critic  with  sufficient  insight  to 
detect  and  emphasize  the  fallacy  of  the  abstract  particular  which 
formed  the  leading  presupposition  of  that  movement.  The 
Kantian  philosophy,  to  be  sure,  had  offered  the  required  criti- 
cism, but  in  such  a  form  that  England  had,  up  to  that  time, 
received  but  little  enlightenment  from  it.  In  addition  to  the 
foreign  sound  of  the  critical  philosophy,  its  implicit  criticism  of 
Hume  needed  to  be  explicated  before  it  could  be  of  wide  influence. 
However  much  a  follower  of  Kant  or  Hegel  Green  may  have 
been,  it  is  quite  certain  that  he  was  more  able  than  either  Kant 
or  Hegel  to  interpret  the  success  and  failure  of  the  English 
philosophy  to  the  English  people.  He  was  firmly  convinced  that 
there  was  but  one  way  to  escape  the  tangle  of  scepticism  and 
that  that  way  consisted  in  recognizing  the  true  nature  of  the 
individual,  as  an  organic  union  of  the  universal  and  the  particular; 
or,  in  terms  of  Hegel's  philosophy,  as  the  concrete  universal. 
Therefore,  Green's  philosophy  may  properly  be  said  to  begin 
and  end  with  a  discussion  of  the  nature  of  the  individual.1 

Although  Green's  treatment  of  the  individual  person  is  gen- 
erally regarded  as  the  distinguishing  mark  of  his  philosophy, 
it  is  the  culmination  rather  than  the  beginning  of  his  thought. 
His  conception  of  the  human  individual  is  founded  on  an  ex- 
haustive and  labored  criticism  of  the  individual,  as  such.  The 
charge,  so  often  made,  that  Green  reaches  his  conclusions  about 
man  and  God  per  saltum  carries  greatest  conviction  to  those  who 
have  neglected  the  more  subtle  passages  in  his  works  for  the 
more  readable.  In  the  present  chapter  an  attempt  will  be  made 
to  set  forth  his  treatment  of  the  individual  as  an  object  and  thus 
to  lay  bare  the  logical  foundation  upon  which  rests  his  later,  and 
perhaps  more  attractive  treatment  of  personality. 

1  This  may  account  for  the  fact  that  Green  gave  no  systematic  treatment  of 
the  categories.  He  has  been  blamed  for  neglecting  this  (cf.  A.  Eastwood,  Mind, 
XVI,  243  ff.;  H.  Haldar,  Philosophical  Review,  III,  172  ff.;  R.  B.  C.  Johnson, 
Princeton  Studies,  I,  3,  18);  but  what  category  is  there  which  is  not  involved  in  a 
discussion  of  the  individual? 


20  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

Probably  everyone  will  admit  on  reflection  that  each  object 
as  we  know  it  is  related  to  other  objects.  And  the  more  we  study 
the  object  the  more  complicated  and  far-reaching  do  its  relations 
become.  Objects  are  related  most  obviously  to  each  other  in 
^  space  and  time,  but  there  are  also  relations  of  origin  and  decay 
and  the  still  more  subtle  relations  of  function  or  reciprocity. 
Each  object  is  not  only  connected  with  other  objects,  but  it  is 
ultimately  connected  in  some  sense  with  all  other  objects  in  the 
varied  process  of  the  universe.  So  much  is  a  commonplace  of 
philosophy,  though  chiefly  commonplace  because  it  is  not  carried 
out  to  its  full  logical  significance,  but  is  taken  simply  to  mean 
that  reality  is  composed  of  a  great  number  of  particulars,  in  their 
own  nature  unrelated,  though  connected  with  each  other  in  an 
external  fashion  as  sticks  might  be  bound  together  with  a  cord. 
This  idea  of  a  mechanical  relation  is  definitely  opposed  by 
Green  since  it  seems  to  assume  that  things  are  there  before  they 
are  related.  In  criticizing  this  conception  of  external  relations 
he  proposes  to  show  that  the  unrelated  does  not  exist  in  any 
sense  whatever.  Moreover,  the  latter  statement  must  be  taken 
as  a  simple,  unmetaphorical  truth.  It  admits  of  no  qualification 
which  would  tend  to  destroy  its  radical  character.  Green's 
treatment  of  objectivity  does  not  deserve  attention  because  it  is 
based  upon  the  common  observation  that  objects  are  related  to 
each  other,  but  because  it  results  in  the  conclusion  that  the  rela- 
tions are  internal  to  the  object,  that  is  to  say,  that  the  relations 
constitute  the  object. 

Before  proceeding  to  Green's  exposition  of  this  radical  thesis, 
however,  it  is  necessary  to  dispose  of  the  general  objection 
that  things  must  be  there  to  relate  before  they  can  be  related.1 
The  implication  is  that  Green's  language  reveals  a  subtle  self- 
contradiction,  that  all  his  talk  of  relations  would  carry  no 
weight  unless  he  surreptitiously  introduced  the  conception  of 
something  beside  the  relations,  namely,  that  which  is  related. 
The  objection  seems  based  on  a  misunderstanding  of  the  force  of 
Green's  argument,  since  it  assumes  that  existence  is  not  a  rela- 
tion ;  which  is  the  very  point  at  issue.  In  the  words  of  William 

i  Cf.  A.  J.  Balfour,  Mind,  IX,  80  f . 


THE   INDIVIDUALITY  OF   THE   OBJECT.  21 

Wallace:  "The  refuter  does  not  take  unrelated  in  all  its  bitter 
truth,  its  absoluteness  and  utterness:  he  still  leaves  it  in  its  com- 
parative sense,  indicating  the  absence  of  those  relations  without 
which  the  being  may  still  exist  and  perform  its  function."1 
In  the  case  of  any  given  relation  there  is  no  doubt  that  we  do 
refer  to  end  terms,  more  or  less  properly  known  as  the  things 
which  are  related;  but  Green's  contention  is  significant  just  at 
this  point,  for  the  things  which  are  related,  when  further  ex- 
amined, turn  out  to  be  themselves  made  up  of  relations. 

The  "Introduction  to  Hume's  Treatise  of  Human  Nature"  is 
essentially  a  protest  against  an  account  of  experience  in  quasi- 
physical  or  mechanical  terms.  Here  Green  enters  into  an 
exhaustive  criticism  of  the  foundations  of  British  idealism, 
exposing  with  untiring  zeal  the  inconsistencies  of  Locke's  method, 
which  had,  as  he  believed,  led  to  the  objectionable  results  of 
Hume.  Eight  years  earlier,  however,  in  his  essay  on  "The 
Philosophy  of  Aristotle,"  printed  in  the  North  British  Review, 
Green  had  already  clearly  defined  his  protest  against  the  abstract 
particular.  In  this  essay  the  author  is  at  his  best  both  jn  style 
and  subject  matter,  and  the  essay  clearly  reveals  the  influence 
which  the  study  of  Greek  thought  had  upon  his  philosophy. 
He  found  Greek  thinking  kindred  to  his  own  and  believed  that  he 
saw  ample  support  in  it  for  his  own  objection  to  the  abstract 
universal  as  well  as  to  the  abstract  particular. 

His  contention  that  the  unrelated  does  not  exist  is  practically 
identical  with  the  notion,  which  played  so  great  a  part  in  Greek 
philosophy,  that  the  indeterminate  is  the  same  as  non-being. 
This  is  a  view,  says  Green,  "which  first  finds  distinct  utterance 
in  the  dictum  of  Heraclitus,  that  objects  of  sense,  as  such,  can- 
not be  known.  The  sensible  is  the  indeterminate  (TO  aireLpov), 
and  the  becoming  (TO  7 lyvb^evov} ."2  The  "object  of  sense"  as 
the  indeterminate  non-being  is  contrasted  with  the  "object  of 
knowledge,"  the  determinate  and  related. 

Green  constantly  reveals  his  own  view  in  expounding  that  of 
Aristotle.  Adopting  the  above  contrast  between  the  "object  of 

1  Lectures  and  Essays  on  Natural  Theology  and  Ethics  (1898),  p.  562. 

2  HI,  S3- 


! 


22  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

sense"  and  the  "object  of  knowledge,"  he  agrees  with  the  Greek 
notion  that  the  object  of  sense  can  "only  be  described  as  that 
which  is  incapable  of  description,  only  determined  as  the  inde- 
terminate, or,  to  take  a  figure  from  the  sphere  of  art,  it  is  a 
matter  as  yet  without  form;  not,  however,  such  a  matter  as  the 
artist  uses,  already  formed  by  the  eternal  Demiurge,  but  the 
negation  of  all  form.  In  other  words,  it  is  nothing,  for  to  be 
anything  it  must  have  a  form  of  some  kind."1  On  the  other 
hand,  the  "object  of  knowledge"  is  capable  of  some  sort  of 
efmition,  it  is,  in  fact,  that  which  is  related.  "That  which  is 
known,"  he  says,  "must  be  susceptible  of  definition  and  descrip- 
tion. If  I  say  that  I  have  knowledge  of  this  bed  as  an  object  of 
sense,  and  try  to  describe  it,  it  appears  that  I  do  this  by  its 
properties.  These,  however,  are  not  properly  sensible  but 
intelligible.  .  .  .  The  attempt  to  know  the  sensible  at  once 
transmutes  it  into  the  intelligible."2 

In  as  much  as  Green  is  irrevocably  committed  to  a  treatment 
of  the  object  of  knowledge,  or,  to  use  his  own  suggestive  phrase, 
of  "matters  of  fact  recognized  as  such,"3  his  interest  in  what  he 
here  designates  the  object  of  sense  must  be  looked  upon  as  a 
means  to  an  end.  The  object  of  sense  in  being  absolutely  unde- 
termined does  not  really  exist.  When  we  attempt  to  think  away 
the  properties  or  relations  of  the  object  of  knowledge  we  find 
that  just  at  the  point  where  definition  becomes  impossible,  the 
object,  properly  speaking,  ceases  to  exist — vanishes  into  the 
limbus  of  indetermination,  and  thus  becomes  non-being.  "If 
we  take  as  the  germ  of  intelligent  experience,"  he  writes,  "the 
simple  consciousness  of  a  sensation,  this  can  only  be  expressed 
as  the  judgment,  'something  is  here.'  The  'here,'  however,  is 
the  next  moment  a  'there';  the  one  sensation  is  superseded  by 
another."4  Without  distinctions  the  object  is  not  possible. 
The  positive  result,  therefore,  of  Green's  criticism  of  the  'object 
of  sense'  is  the  conviction  that  the  real  object,  the  'object  of 
knowledge,'  is  the  limited,  the  defined,  and  that  if  we  suppose 

1  III,  54- 

2  Ibid. 

3  Prolegomena,  sec.  16. 

4  III,  52. 


THE   INDIVIDUALITY  OF   THE   OBJECT.  23 

all  definition,  i.  e.,  all  properties,  absent,  nothing  remains.  But 
the  properties  are  relations  to  other  objects.  The  most  abstract 
object  possible  for  us  to  deal  with  is  at  least  a  'this,'  and  is  there- 
fore distinguished  from  some  other  object — it  is  named.  To  put 
the  matter  in  Green's  single  sentence;  "The  object  of  knowledge 
and  the  true  reality  coincide."1  Objectivity  is  through  and 
through  ideal  or  intelligible,  i.  e.,  it  is  made  up  of  relations. 

This  conclusion,  however,  is  to  be  carefully  distinguished  from 
those  theories  which  tend  to  reduce  the  objective  world  to  'states 
of  consciousness,'  or,  as  the  saying  is,  to  consider  the  object  as 
but  a  mere  idea  in  the  mind.  In  this  matter  Green  agrees  wholly 
with  the  words  of  Bosanquet:  '"The  Sun'  means  'the  Sun'; 
and  whatever  that  may  be,  it  is  not  anything  merely  in  my  mind ; 
not  relative  purely  to  me  as  a  conscious  organism ;  not  a  psychical 
fact  in  my  individual  history."2  He  had  not  the  slightest  notion 
of  identifying  himself  with  any  idealism  of  the  subjective  type, 
indeed,  his  theory  is  fundamentally  opposed  to  such  an  idealism. 
He  objects  first  of  all  to  the  phrase  "mere  idea "  because  it  is  based 
upon  a  false  antithesis  between  the  real  and  the  work  of  the  mind 
— a  distinction  which  gained  currency  through  the  'new  way  of 
ideas '  which  from  Locke  onwards  assumes  that  nothing  is  known 
except  the  order  and  connection  of  ideas  within  the  mind.  The 
very  statement  postulates  a  world  of  reality  beyond  our  states 
of  consciousness  but  would  destroy  all  hope  of  coming  into 
contact  with  it.  Thomas  Reid  has  well  expressed  the  natural 
objection  to  this  theory  which  limits  our  knowledge  to  the  order 
and  connection  of  our  ideas,  in  the  following  language:  "If 
this  be  true;  supposing  certain  impressions  and  ideas  to  exist 
presently  in  my  mind,  I  cannot,  from  their  existence,  infer  the 
existence  of  any  thing  else;  my  impressions  and  ideas  are  the 
only  existences  of  which  I  can  have  any  knowledge  or  concep- 
tion; and  they  are  such  fleeting  and  transitory  beings,  that  they 
can  have  no  existence  at  all,  any  longer  than  I  am  conscious  of 
them.  So  that,  upon  this  hypothesis,  the  whole  universe  about 
me,  bodies  and  spirits,  sun,  moon,  stars,  and  earth,  friends  and 

1  in,  54. 

2  Logic  (second  edition),  I,  73. 


24  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

relations,  all  things  without  exception,  which  I  imagined  to  have 
a  permanent  existence  whether  I  thought  of  them  or  not,  vanish 
at  once; 

And,  like  the  baseless  fabric  of  a  vision, 
Leave  not  a  track  behind."1 

This  protest  voiced  by  Scottish  philosophy  was  an  open 
expression  of  a  general  dissatisfaction  with  British  idealistic 
theory.  Such  a  theory  was  well  calculated  to  bring  about  a 
stout  resistance  from  those  who  were  apprehensive  lest  solid, 
objective  facts  should  disappear  into  subjective  whim.  That 
such  a  resistance,  however  blind  at  first,  was  a  just  one  was 
amply  demonstrated  in  the  course  of  the  development  from 
Locke  to  Hume.  Locke  had,  to  be  sure,  awkwardly  tried  to  re- 
tain a  grasp  on  the  solid  world  by  his  famous  distinction  between 
the  primary  and  secondary  qualities  of  objects;  but  little  by  little 
the  distinction  had  fallen  of  its  own  weight  since  it  could  not 
possibly  be  harmonized  with  his  own  more  fundamental  theory 
of  knowledge.  Berkeley  with  remorseless  logic  showed  that  the 
primary  qualities  could  be  reduced  to  the  same  terms  with  the 
secondary;  that  extension,  for  instance,  no  more  truly  existed 
within  the  object  itself  beyond  our  idea  than  does  color  or  odor. 

Berkeley's  criticism  was,  however,  unsatisfactory  to  the  sober 
thinking  of  England  because  it  had  apparently  destroyed  the 
antithesis  by  transmuting  the  primary  into  the  secondary  quali- 
ties. In  doing  so  Berkeley  had  kept  the  Lockean  distinction  in 
all  its  essentials;  for  in  his  hands  all  qualities  became  just  what  a 
part  of  them  were  for  Locke.  Instead  of  rising  above  the  ab- 
straction to  a  conception  of  the  concrete  relation  of  thought  and 
its  object,  he  had  chosen  the  extreme  which  seemed  to  him 
furthest  removed  from  the  'mathematical  atheism,'  which  he  so 
much  desired  to  refute,  and  reduced  the  other  extreme  to  it. 
"With  Locke,"  says  Green,  "it  was  body  or  matter,  as  proxi- 
mately,  though  in  subordination  to  the  Divine  Will,  the  im- 
printer of  those  most  lively  ideas  which  we  cannot  make  for 
ourselves.  His  followers  insisted  on  the  proximate,  while  they 
ignored  the  ultimate,  reference.  Hence,  as  Berkeley  conceived, 

1  An  Inquiry  into  the  Human  Mind  on  the  Principles  of  Common  Sense  (third 
edition,  Dublin,  1779),  pp.  v-vi;  (Stewart  edition,  1813),  Vol.  I,  p.  168. 


THE   INDIVIDUALITY   OF   THE   OBJECT.  25 

their  Atheism,  which  he  could  cut  from  under  their  feet  by  the 
simple  plan  of  eliminating  the  proximate  reference  altogether, 
and  thus  showing  that  God,  not  matter,  is  the  immediate  im- 
printer of  ideas  on  the  senses  and  the  suggester  of  such  ideas  of 
imagination  as  the  ideas  of  sense,  in  virtue  of  habitual  associa- 
tion, constantly  introduce."1  The  result  of  such  a  method  was 
that  matter  became  for  Berkeley  "a  fiction"  except  in  so  far  as 
its  qualities  "can  be  reduced  to  simple  feelings."2  "But  in  the 
hurry  of  theological  advocacy,"  Green  continues,  "and  under 
the  influence  of  a  misleading  terminology,  he  failed  to  distinguish 
this  true  proposition — there  is  nothing  real  apart  from  thought — 
from  this  false  one,  its  virtual  contradictory — there  is  nothing 
other  than  feeling."3 

At  this  point  Green  is  diametrically  opposed  to  Berkeleyean 
idealism  as  he  understood  it.  The  formula  esse  est  percipi  seemed 
to  him  to  be  a  declaration  that  there  is  nothing  other  than  feeling  f 
i.  e.j  nothing  beyond  conscious  states,  and  this  he  tells  us  is  the 
virtual  contradictory  of  his  own  theory  that  there  is  nothing 
real  apart  from  thought.  From  such  language  it  is  evident 
then  that  Green  had  no  intention  of  reducing  the  world  of 
objects  to  the  fleeting  shadows  of  ideas  or  psychic  states  by  the 
declaration  that  the  unrelated  does  not  exist.  The  object  is  just 
as  real  as  thought,  but  neither  is  real  apart  from  the  other. 
They  are  to  be  conceived  "as  together  in  essential  correlation 
constituting  the  real."4  Indeed,  far  from  making  the  object 
unreal,  its  relation  to  thought  is  precisely  that  in  which  its  reality 
consists,  since  it,  like  everything  else,  is  real  in  its  connection 
with  other  things  and  not  by  being  somehow  opposed  to  the 
unreal. 

The  antithesis  between  the  real  and  the  work  of  the  mind  is 
invalid,   not  necessarily  because  the  real  is  the  work  of  the    > 
mind,  but,  as  Green  says,  "because  the  work  of  the  mind  is 
real."6     "Either  the  work  of  the  mind,"  he  says,  "is  a  name  for 

1 1,  139- 
2 1,  135. 

•I,    140,   141.       Cf.  II,  212  ff. 
4  I,   141. 

8  Prolegomena,  sec.  24. 


26  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

nothing,  expressing  a  mere  privation  or  indeterminateness,  a 
mere  absence  of  qualities — in  which  case  nothing  is  conveyed  by 
the  proposition  which  opposes  the  real  or  anything  else  to  it: 
or,  on  the  other  hand,  if  it  has  qualities  and  relations  of  its  own, 
then  it  is  just  as  real  as  anything  else."1  But  even  if  we  were  to 
admit,  for  the  sake  of  the  argument,  that  the  work  of  the  mind  is 
unreal,  it  would  then  be  clearly  impossible  to  assign  any  meaning 
to  its  opposite,  a  supposed  real;  for,  in  the  words  of  Green, 
"Whether  we  suppose  it  the  quality  of  a  mere  sensation,  as  such, 
or  of  mere  body,  as  such,  we  find  that  we  are  unawares  defining 
it  by  relations  which  are  themselves  the  work  of  the  mind,  and 
that  after  abstraction  of  these  nothing  remains  to  give  the  anti- 
thesis to  the  work  of  the  mind  any  meaning."2  If  we  try  to 
consider  the  mere  sensation  as  the  real  we  must  admit  that 
such  a  "reality  is  in  perpetual  process  of  disappearing  into  the 
unreality  of  thought.  No  point  can  be  fixed  either  in  the  flux  of 
time  or  in  the  imaginary  process  from  without  to  within  the  mind, 
on  the  one  side  of  which  can  be  placed  real  existence,  on  the  other 
the  mere  idea."3 

Green's  definition  of  the  real  is  well  summed  up  in  the  above 
V  phrase  as  that  which  "has  qualities  and  relations  of  its  own." 
This  is  but  the  positive  form  of  the  statement  that  the  unrelated 
does  not  exist.  It  is  on  this  account  that  the  question  "What  is 
real?"  seems  to  Green  to  be  a  "futile  one,"  for  it  can  be  answered 
only  by  saying  'everything  is  real,'  since  everything  with  which 
we  have  to  do  "has  qualities  and  relations  of  its  own."4  It  is 
therefore  impossible  to  say  'this'  is  real,  'that'  is  unreal;  for 
all  designation  is  relation,  and  all  relation  is  the  mark  of  reality. 
The  general  question  What  is  real?  is,  therefore,  not  complete. 
Before  it  can  be  understood  and  answered  it  must  be  changed  so 
that  it  will  have  a  content  expressing  a  doubtful  relation.  I  may 
ask  of  myself  or  another  whether  a  given  relation  which  I  have 
assumed  is  really  as  I  have  assumed.  Such  a  question  can  be 
answered  in  turn  only  by  reference  to  other  relations.  But  the 

1  Prolegomena,  sec.  22.     My  italics. 

2  I,  93- 
8 1,  70. 

4  Cf.  Prolegomena,  sec.  24. 


THE   INDIVIDUALITY  OF   THE   OBJECT.  27 

question,  in  general,  is  as  barren  as  any  proposed  by  the  School- 
men; it  simply  conveys  no  meaning  and  would  not  be  supposed 
to  do  so  were  it  not  for  the  fact  that  the  mind  adds  enough  to  the 
bare  statement  to  make  it  determinate.  We  unhesitatingly 
interpret  the  question  in  its  individual  context  and  taking  the 
will  for  the  words  we  answer  it  as  best  we  can.  By  the  general 
question  the  speaker  usually  intends  to  inquire  for  a  distinction 
between  objective  fact  and  subjective  fancy;  but  real  and  unreal 
are  not  equivalent  to  fact  and  fancy.  Every  thoroughgoing 
philosophy  must  attempt  some  distinction  between  the  latter 
pair,  but  to  start  with  a  distinction  between  the  former  is  to 
make  philosophy  impossible.1 

Green  devotes  a  great  deal  of  attention  to  the  distinction 
between  fact  and  fancy.  As  we  noted  in  Chapter  I,  he  actually 
considers  the  question  "What  is  a  fact?"  a  fundamental  one  for 
metaphysic.  'Fact'  for  Green  is  virtually  synonymous  with 
'object,'  and  his  treatment  of  the  object  cannot  be  considered 
apart  from  his  treatment  of  the  nature  of  a  fact.  At  first  thought 
it  may  seem  fanciful  to  identify  fact  and  object,  but  when  we 
remember  that  the  object  is  the  object  of  knowledge  we  get  a 
glimpse  of  the  identity.  The  characteristic  features  of  the  object 
and  the  characteristic  arguments  in  Green's  treatment  of  it 
will  be  found  also  in  a  discussion  of  the  'fact.'  Like  the  object, 
the  fact  never  stands  alone  in  bare  abstraction,  but  is  constituted 
by  its  relations  to  other  facts.  Philosophy  has  to  face  the 
problem  of  the  unrelated  particular  here  just  as  it  did  in  the  case 
of  objects.  The  common  opinion  seems  to  be  that  facts  exist 
somehow  as  unyielding  static  things,  and  that  the  mind  collects 
them  and  strings  them  together  by  attaching  one  to  another  in 
an  external  fashion.  Facts  are  variously  spoken  of  as  'immedi- 
ate,' as  'given  in  sensation,'  or,  we  are  bidden  to  settle  our  dis- 
putes by  observing  the  facts  just  as  we  have  been  told  to  compare 
our  idea  with  its  object  in  order  to  test  the  truth  or  adequacy  of 
the  idea.  Facts  are  supposed  to  be  the  '  raw  material '  of  knowl- 
edge, in  their  own  peculiar  nature  quite  without  form  or  mean- 
ing, in  short,  quite  unideal.  No  sooner  do  we  get  rid  of  the 

1  Cf.  i,  268. 


28  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

unrelated  thing  beyond  knowledge  than  it  appears  again,  this 
time  within  knowledge,  as  the  unmeaning  fact  or  datum  out  of 
which  knowledge  is  supposed  to  arise.  Green  is  more  hostile, 
if  possible,  to  the  latter  contention  than  he  was  to  the  former. 

"The  unscientific  man,"  says  Green,  "if  asked  what  an  acid  is, 
will  say,  perhaps,  that  it  is  that  which  sets  his  teeth  on  edge,"1 
thus  revealing  an  essentially  correct  apprehension  of  the  fact 
as  a  relation.  If  the  'unscientific  man'  is  pressed,  however,  he 
will  perhaps  resort  to  the  hypothesis  that  the  facts  are  given  and 
the  relations  added  by  the  mind.  This  position  is  not  peculiar, 
indeed,  to  the  unscientific  man.  Much  philosophical  discussion 
has  been  founded  on  just  this  supposed  difference  in  kind  between 
fact  and  theory.  That  bare,  crude  facts  exist  prior  to  con- 
nection and  interpretation  is,  perhaps,  a  more  subtle  error  than 
that  the  thing  is  there  before  it  is  related;  for  here  at  least  we 
do  not  propose  to  describe  that  which,  by  hypothesis,  we  have 
placed  beyond  the  reach  of  description.  Our  datum  is  admittedly 
a  datum  within  experience,  but  it  is  looked  upon  simply  as  a 
datum,  a  mere  unmediated  particular,  an  atom  of  knowledge. 
This  fallacy  is  harder  to  refute  because  it  is  more  widely  held  by 
all  classes  of  people,  and  therefore  more  deeply  entrenched  in 
language  and  custom.  Even  the  most  sophisticated  science 
speaks  of  collecting  its  data  before  it  begins  to  interpret  and  of 
getting  the  'facts  before  theories.' 

"Every  kind  of  fact,"  says  Bradley,  "must  possess  these  two 
sides  of  existence  and  content,  .  .  .  But  there  is  a  class  of  facts 
~which  possess  another  and  additional  third  side.  They  have  a 
'•meaning."*  Against  such  a  view  Green  opposes  the  contention 
that  there  are  no  facts  without  meaning.  It  is  the  very  nature 
of  a  fact  to  be  in  an  intelligible  relation,  in  the  form  of  judgment, 

1  HI.  53- 

*  Principles  of  Logic  (1883),  p.  3.  Italics  mine.  There  is  no  doubt  that  passages 
may  be  found  in  Bradley  which  are  in  general  harmony  with  the  views  advanced 
toy  Green;  e.  g.,  "there  exists  a  notion  that  ideality  is  something  outside  of  facts, 
•something  imported  into  them,  or  imposed  as  a  sort  of  layer  above  them;  and  we 
talk  as  if  facts,  when  let  alone,  were  in  no  sense  ideal.  But  any  such  notion  is 
illusory."  (Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  165.)  Even  here,  however,  the  context 
leads  the  reader  to  conclude  that  the  author  is  not  firmly  convinced  of  the  truth  of 
his  own  statement. 


THE   INDIVIDUALITY  OF   THE   OBJECT.  29 

and  thus  to  have  a  meaning.  "Mere  sensation,"  he  writes, 
"is  in  truth  a  phrase  that  represents  no  reality.  It  is  the  result 
of  a  process  of  abstraction;  but  having  got  the  phrase  we  give  a 
confused  meaning  to  it,  we  fill  up  the  shell  which  our  abstraction 
has  left,  by  reintroducing  the  qualification  which  we  assumed 
ourselves  to  have  got  rid  of.  We  present  the  mere  sensations 
to  ourselves  as  determined  by  relation  in  a  way  that  would  be 
impossible  in  the  absence  of  that  connecting  action  which  we 
assume  to  be  absent  in  designating  them  mere  sensations."1 
If  such  a  position  is  defensible  it  means  that  there  can  be  no 
antithesis  between  "thought,  as  that  in  which  we  are  active,  and 
experience,  as  that  in  which  we  are  simply  receptive,"  for 
"thought  appears  as  a  factor  in  experience  even  in  its  remotest 
germs."2  It  also  follows  that  knowledge  is  not  a  process  of  con- 
juring meaning  out  of  crude  facts  or  unmeaning  data.  Facts, 
like  sensations,  are,  for  him,  already  judgments.  In  short,  the 
'mere  datum  of  the  senses,'  the  unpredicated  particular,  under 
whatever  disguise,  has  no  claim  upon  philosophy.  It  is  but  the 
result  of  inadequate  thinking  to  suppose  that  facts  exist  prior  to 
interpretation.3 

Another  reason  which  Green  gives  for  rejecting  the  notion 
that  facts  are  given  as  uninterpreted  particulars  is  that  such  a 
view  leads  to  wrong  conclusions  regarding  the  nature  of  thought. 
The  'general  idea'  comes  to  be  regarded  as  the  result  of  numerous 
repetitions  in  Hume's  sense.  Through  sensation  we  are  sup- 
posed to  get  the  concrete  facts,  the  function  of  thought  being  to 
supervene  and  strip  off  these  attributes  from  the  concrete,  im- 
mediate experience,  in  order  to  '  recombine  them '  in  the  form  of 
the  universal  which  thus  becomes  a  sort  of  'mutilated  par- 
ticular.'4 In  his  lectures  on  "The  Logic  of  the  Formal  Logi- 
cians," delivered  at  Oxford  in  1874-75,  Green  deals  in  a  very 
significant  way  with  this  conception  of  the  universal  as  the 

1  Prolegomena,  sec.  46. 

2  III,  52. 

*  If  there  are  animals  which  feel  without  thinking,  their  feelings  are  not  facts 
for  them  but  only  for  another.  Green  does  not  need  to  prove  that  there  are  no 
such  animals  but  only  that  wherever  there  is  knowledge  there  is  something  other 
than  physiological  processes.  Cf.  Prolegomena,  sec.  48,  also  I,  142,  281,  282. 

4  Cf.  Ill,  48,  49. 


30  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

abstract  remnant  of  once  living  particulars.  "The  process  of 
abstraction,"  he  says,  "as  ordinarily  described  (as  beginning  with 
complex  attributes  and  leaving  out  attributes  till  the  notion  is 
reached  which  has  the  minimum  of  determination),  if  it  really 
took  place,  would  consist  in  moving  backwards.  It  would  be  a 
donkey-race.  The  man  who  had  gone  least  way  in  it  would  have 
the  advantage,  in  respect  of  fulness  and  definiteness  of  thinking, 
of  the  man  who  had  gone  furthest."1  He  says  elsewhere  that 
v  thinking  "is  not  a  progress  from  the  less  to  the  more  abstract, 
but  from  the  less  to  the  more  determinate.  ...  If  it  separates 
one  attribute  from  another,  it  is  to  make  each  not  less  but  more 
definite  in  virtue  of  a  new  relation."2 

These  false  notions  concerning  the  nature  of  thought  have 
been  fostered  and  even  promulgated  by  formal  logic  which,  in 
Green's  language,  "is  the  science  not  of  the  method  of  knowledge 
(which  implies  relation  to  objects) ,  but  of  those  '  forms  of  thought ' 
in  conforming  to  which  we  think  correctly,  but  in  a  way  that 
contributes  nothing  to  knowledge  or  truth."3  This  conception 
of  logic  appealed  to  the  Schoolmen,  for  "they  did  not  want  a 
method  of  arriving  at  truth,  nor  a  theory  of  what  knowledge 
consists  in.  ...  What  they  did  want  was  a  method  of  evolving 
what  was  involved  in  conceded  propositions  of  the  faith.  Nomi- 
nalism is  the  process  by  which  scholastic  logic  destroys  itself. 
It  is  the  recognition  of  the  fact  that  in  its  deductions  from 
universals  syllogistic  logic  was  merely  analysing  the  meaning 
of  names.  Hence  the  modern  mind,  in  the  effort  to  know  the 
truth  about  nature  itself,  discards  it."4  Such  a  logic  serves  a 
purpose,  for  it  has  a  value  as  a  "practical  though  not  as  a  specu- 
lative science."  Attempts  to  raise  it  to  the  rank  of  a  specula- 
tive science,  as  an  examination  of  formal  thought,  have  failed; 
for  the  ostensible  result  of  pure  thinking  "is  exactly  the  same 
as  its  beginning,"  and  therefore  represents  no  process  of  thought 
whatever.  "So  long  as  the  judgment  stood,  'all  men  are 
mortal,'"  says  Green,  "there  was  some  color  for  saying  that  in 

lu,  192. 
2  in,  53- 
8 II,  159-60. 

4  II,  161. 


THE   INDIVIDUALITY  OF   THE   OBJECT.  31 

the  judgment,  'some  mortals  are  men/  there  was  a  further  act  of 
thought:  but  put  it  as  'all  men  =  some  mortals,'  and  the  con- 
version into  'some  mortals  =  all  men*  loses  all  appearance  of 
forming  a  further  act  of  thought  at  all."1 

With  Locke,  therefore,  Green  agrees  that  syllogistic  or  formal 
logic  can  yield  "no  instructive  propositions."2  If  we  are  to  have 
knowledge  at  all,  inference  must  be  possible,  and  in  order  that 
inference  should  be  possible  logic  must  be  more  than  formal 
thinking.  Formal  logic  has  laid  philosophy  open  to  the  charge 
of  putting  into  its  premises  whatever  it  desires  to  produce  in  its 
conclusion.  Philosophical  method,  however,  is  in  no  sense 
identical  with  that  of  formal  logic.  The  latter  is  the  victim  of  a 
deep  seated  fault  which  makes  it  absolutely  incapable  of  dealing 
with  real  inference,  and  therefore,  with  real  knowledge.  The 
root  of  this  weakness  is  of  ancient  origin.  Green  traces  the  diffi- 
culty to  Aristotle's  failure  to  recognize  the  true  and  complete 
force  of  the  doctrine  of  the  non-existence  of  the  indeterminate. 

The  error  of  Aristotelian  logic  is  that  of  identifying  the  first 
determination  of  the  'sensible  thing'  by  thought  with  its  com- 
plete determination.  Such  a  procedure  leaves  no  room  for  the 
expansion  of  knowledge.  The  'object  of  sense'  is  crystallized 
in  a  name,  and  logic  becomes  little  better  than  a  game  wherein 
the  words  are  counters  or  symbols  of  that  which  was  once  living 
reality  but  which  is  now  lifeless  abstraction.  It  represents  the 
indolence  of  thought.  There  is  a  kind  of  inertia  in  all  thinking 
which  has  perpetually  to  be  overcome  if  thought  is  to  be  kept 
abreast  of  reality,  and  formal  logic  is  an  apotheosis  of  this 
indolence.  It  depends  upon  crystallized  notions  and  rigid 
classes  for  its  very  existence.  Having  named  a  thing,  the  mind 
rests  content.  When  this  kind  of  logic  is  identified  with  thought 
it  is  easy  to  understand  why  protests  are  raised  against  the  theory 
that  thought  is  adequate  to  reality.  But  is  thought  limited  to 
such  a  petty  round  of  barren  formalism?  By  no  means,  ac- 
cording to  Green.  Such  thought  is  thought  which  dies  in  its 
infancy,  or,  to  change  the  figure,  is  bound  within  arbitrary  and 

UI.I64-      Cf.  I,  21. 

2 1,  285. 


32  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

accidental  limits  and  becomes  dwarfed.  Its  first  movement, 
he  tells  us,  is  its  last  so  that  it  "is  for  ever  retracing  the  first  steps 
of  its  childhood,  which  are  represented  by  terms  in  received  use; 
that  it  is  working  a  treadmill,  which,  when  it  fancies  itself 
laboriously  ascending,  brings  it  back  to  the  simple  predication  of 
being  with  which  it  really  began."1 

Green's  language  suggests  a  picture  of  formal  logic  as  a  kind  of 
abortive  thought,  or  as  thought  which  had  been  blighted  in  its 
infancy.  Moreover,  this  blight  has  vitiated  the  whole  process 
of  thought  just  as  a  morbid  condition  of  an  organism  blights  or 
destroys  its  entire  function.  The  beginnings  of  formal  logic 
are,  indeed,  normal.  The  first  determination  of  the  object  of 
sense  is  "real  and  essential,  as  contrasted  with  the  mere  object 
of  sense.  It  is  determinate,  and  therefore  something,  while  that 
was  nothing.  .  .  .  But  this  determinate  form  is  capable  of 
infinitely  numerous  other  determinations  as  it  is  brought  into 
other  relations.  In  other  words,  our  first  knowledge  of  a  thing 
is  not  our  ultimate  knowledge  of  it;  the  first  'form'  is  not  the 
final  one;  the  mere  universal  is  a  shell  to  be  filled  up  by  par- 
ticular attributes."2  Having  thus  once  identified  the  essence 
with  the  first  determination  of  the  thing,  logic  becomes  a  barren 
formalism  in  which  thought  is  but  a  process  of  ascending  "from 
sensible  things  to  forms,  and  from  the  lower,  i.  e.,  the  less  ab- 
stract and  extensive  forms,  to  the  higher,  i.  e.,  the  more  abstract 
and  extensive."3  The  'sensible  thing'  has  been  crystallized  into 
the  class,  and  as  such  can  only  become  the  subject  of  judgments 
in  which  it  is  "brought  under  a  class  more  extensive  than  itself, 
i.  e.,  in  which  that  is  predicated  of  it  which  is  already  involved 
in  it."  "By  such  a  process,"  he  continues,  "its  emptiness  be- 
comes yet  more  empty,  and  meanwhile  the  individual  thing  is 
asserting  its  independence.  Instead  of  being  regarded  as  that 
which  becomes  universal  as  soon  as  it  is  judged  of  or  known,  in 
virtue  of  the  property  under  which  it  is  known,  it  is  connected 
with  the  universal  as  a  thing  with  the  class  to  which  it  belongs. 
In  this  position  it  is  vain  to  deny  its  priority  and  independence. 

UII,  61. 

3  in,  56. 
» in,  59. 


THE   INDIVIDUALITY   OF   THE   OBJECT.  33 

Thus  individuals  come  to  be  regarded  as  one  set  of  knowable 
things,  universals  another."1  Such  crude  realism  which  is 
'virtually  nominalism'  holds  the  universal  to  be  real  "but  it 
finds  the  universal  simply  in  the  meaning  of  a  name."2  "It 
makes  its  universal  a  class  instead  of  a  relation,  and  it  takes  as 
the  essential  attributes  of  the  class  those  only  which  are  con- 
noted by  its  name,  i.  e.,  the  most  superficial."3 

In  direct  opposition  to  this  entire  scheme  of  the  formal  logi- 
cians  Green  holds  that  the  universal  aspect  of  the  object  is 
relation  rather  than  class,  and  thinking  is  a  progress  "from  the 
less  to  the  more  determinate"  To  begin  with,  the  object  is  seen 
to  be  related,  as  it  were,  only  at  one  point;  but  it  later  shows 
itself  to  be  more  and  more  related  to  each  and  every  other 
object.  To  be  an  object  at  all  is  to  be  related,  but  the  relation 
is  at  first  only  in  germ.  To  the  object  at  this  stage  we  can 
apply  only  the  predicate  of  existence.  But  although  existence 
is  the  simplest  and  least  determination,  it  is  nevertheless  a 
determination  of  the  object  and  therefore,  removed  in  to  to  ccelo 
from  the  object  of  sense,  the  indeterminate  and  the  non-existent. 
At  this  low  point  of  determination  the  object  is  nebulous,  a  mere 
'this.'  It  falls  within  a  class  but  has  this  significance  that  it  is 
big  with  possibilities.  It  is  "capable  of  infinitely  numerous  other 
determinations  as  it  is  brought  into  other  relations."4 

We  have  now  reached  the  following  conclusions.  The  object 
is  the  object  of  knowledge  and  as  such  it  "unites  the  two  sides 
of  individuality  and  universality  in  the  same  way"  as  thought 
does.  "It  is  a  centre  of  relations,  which  constitute  its  proper- 
ties. As  differenced  from  all  things  else  by  the  sum  of  these 
relations,  it  is  individual,  but  to  be  so  differenced  from  them  all 
it  must  have  an  element  in  common  with  them.  If  it  be  said  that 
it  is  individual,  as  momentarily  presented  to  the  sense,  this 
very  presentation  can  only  be  known  or  named,  i.  e.,  can  only 
have  any  meaning,  as  one  property  or  relation  of  the  thing 
amongst  others."5  The  object  is  at  once,  "the  individual  uni- 

1  in,  57.  2  in,  60.  »in,  61.  *  in,  56. 

6  III,  65.  Green  has  used  'individual*  in  this  quotation  in  the  loose  sense  of 
'particular.'  The  meaning  is,  however,  unambiguous  and  need  not  be  in  the  least 
confused  with  the  technical  use  of  the  'individual  as  the  synthesis  of  the  universal 
and  the  particular.' 


34  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

versalized  through  its  particular  relations  or  qualities"  and 
"the  universal  individualized  through  its  particularity."1  This 
process  of  individualization  is  a  real  process  in  which  existence 
becomes  more  and  more  determinate  through  relations.  In  this 
sense  the  object  may  be  said  to  be  eternally  incomplete;  it  is  an 
individual  object  not  when  it  is  securely  coralled  within  a  class 
but  in  proportion  as  its  implicit  nature  has  been  explicated  by 
this  process  of  universalizing  through  relations.  Such  a  theory 
"admits  in  the  fullest  measure,"  says  Green,  "that  the  individual 
thing  is  real,  and  an  object  of  knowledge,  but  maintains  that  it 
is  so  only  in  virtue  of  a  relation  which  is  universal,  and  without 
which  the  thing  would  have  no  intelligible  properties  at  all."2 

1  in,  70. 

2  in,  60. 


CHAPTER   III. 

THE   IMPLICATIONS  OF   OBJECTIVITY. 

WE  have  now  reached  a  point  from  which  we  may  proceed  to 
an  examination  of  Green's  theory  of  consciousness  which,  as  we 
have  observed,  rests  on  an  examination  of  the  object.  The  ob- 
ject has  been  exhibited  as  an  individual,  uniting  particuliarity  and 
universality  through  its  relations  in  an  objective  order.  A 
moment's  reflection,  however,  will  show  that  the  term  'relation* 
is  as  yet  unexplained.  We  have,  so  to  speak,  made  use  of  the 
obvious  fact  of  relations  to  portray  the  nature  of  objects,  but 
have  not  yet  inquired  into  the  nature  of  relations  as  such.  We  *^Jk+j 
have  seen  relations  functioning  in  the  world  of  objective  things; 
but  have  not  investigated  the  source  of  such  relations.  It  is  the  ^^ 
purpose  of  this  chapter  to  inquire  into  the  character  and  impli- 
cations of  the  relation  which  necessarily  plays  so  large  a  part  in 
every  definition  of  the  object;  and  to»show  in  this  way  that  the 
subjective  factor  is  really  involved  in  objectivity.1 

As  long  as  the  attention  is  fixed  upon  the  object  which  is 
being  defined  by  relations,  i.  e.,  upon  the  content  of  the  defini- 
tion, we  have  no  more  need  for  a  conscious  subject  than  the 
astronomer  who  found  no  God  when  he  swept  the  heavens  with 
his  telescope  had  for  a  God.  Scientific  theory  is  justly  uncon- 
cerned with  such  a  subject.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  philosophy 
cannot  permanently  escape  the  notion  that  a  definition  is  some- 
how more  than  its  content.  It  is  by  no  means  necessary  to 
separate  the  form  from  the  content,  but  it  seems  to  be  necessary 
to  recognize  that  the  content  has  a  form.  This  recognition  is  a 
distinct  step  in  the  history  of  mental  development.  The  child- 
like mind  is  always  engulfed  by  the  sheer  objective  reality,  by 

1  Green's  general  contention  that  the  object  implies  a  subject  is  not  based  on 
the  mere  fact  that  subject  and  object  are  correlative  terms.  Such  formal  reasoning 
has  been  often  used  by  philosophers,  but  Green  is  too  well  aware  of  the  limitations 
of  formal  logic  to  rest  his  case  on  any  such  procedure.  The  implication  with 
which  he  deals,  as  we  shall  soon  discover,  does  not  depend  upon  a  superficial  verbal 
definition  of  the  object,  but  upon  an  examination  of  its  inmost  nature. 

35 


36  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

the  meaning  of  its  environment,  without  any  apparent  reflection 
upon  the  existence  and  nature  of  meaning  itself.  But  upon  a 
closer  scrutiny  it  discovers  that  in  finding  its  way  about  among 
other  objects,  and  in  dealing  with  them  generally,  it  has  always 
been  concerned  with  meaning.  Like  Monsieur  Jourdain  when 
he  discovered  that  he  had  been  talking  prose  all  his  life,  the  mind 
discovers  a  deeper  lying  reality  when  it  begins  to  reflect  upon  the 
meaning  aspect  of  experience,  although  it  has  never  known 
anything  else  but  meaning.  When  the  mind  has  once  grasped 
the  notion  that  the  objective  world  is  made  up  of  relations,  i.  e., 
that  it  is  the  very  essence  of  the  object  to  be  related,  it  is  but 
another  step  in  the  same  direction  to  see  that  to  be  related  is  to 
have  a  meaning. 

But  in  meaning  we  have  to  do  with  a  reality  of  a  different  order, 
so  far  unlike  the  objects  of  experience  that  it  cannot  be  dis- 
cussed in  terms  appropriate  to  them.  Objects  of  knowledge  are 
in  time  and  space,  or  they  are  connected  in  a  causal  series;  but 
meaning  is  not  related  to  objects  as  they  are  to  each  other. 
Although  it  is  through  these  relations  that  objects  exist  and 
have  a  meaning,  the  meaning  itself  is  unique.  It  is  not,  properly 
speaking,  an  object  of  knowledge  at  all,  and  yet  it  is  never 
separated  from  objects  of  knowledge.  If  we  define  experience,  as 
Green  does,  as  "matters  of  fact  recognized  as  such,"  we  may 
perhaps  say  that  in  discussing  objects  we  have  to  do  with  matters 
of  fact  recognized  as  such ;  while  in  discussing  meaning  we  are 
interested  in  matters  of  fact  recognized  as  such.  They  are  in- 
separable but  very  different  moments  of  a  single  reality. 

The  first  step  toward  understanding  the  nature  of  meaning  is 
to  recognize  that  meaning  and  judgment  are  practically  identical 
in  Green's  system,  or  that  meaning  is  always  meaning  for  some 
one  and,  therefore,  in  the  form  of  judgment.  Such  an  identi- 
fication is  no  doubt  wholly  dependent  upon  how  judgment  is  to 
be  defined  or  conceived.  To  begin  with,  a  judgment  must 
obviously  be  distinguished  from  a  proposition.  The  latter  may 
be  defined  as  a  meaning  expressed  in  a  conventional  language; 
perhaps  it  must  even  be  still  more  limited  in  form  to  a  subject 
and  predicate  bound  together  by  a  copula.  At  any  rate,  we  see 


THE   IMPLICATIONS  OF  OBJECTIVITY.  37 

at  a  glance  that  if  judgment  were  to  be  so  denned  it  would  be  a 
much  narrower  term  than  meaning;  for  meaning  may  be  ex- 
pressed by  a  single  word,  a  gesture,  or  even  an  inhibition  of 
movement.1  Therefore,  while  every  proposition  probably  repre- 
sents a  meaning,2  it  is  not  impossible  that  meaning  may  occur 
independently  of  propositions  taken  in  this  narrow  sense.  A^ 
judgment,  on  the  contrary,  is  an  act  of  knowledge  which,  regard- 
less of  its  form  of  expression,  deals  intimately  with  the  very  rela- 
tions which  have  been  shown  to  constitute  the  objective  order. 
To  know,  to  judge,  is  first  of  all  to  apprehend  a  meaning.  This 
brands  every  judgment,  therefore,  as  an  expression  of  meaning, 
and  every  meaning  as  a  judgment.  Like  meaning,  judgment  is  a 
distinctive  characteristic,  not  of  the  merely  objective  phase  of 
experience,  but  of  concrete  experience  which  has  been  defined  as 
matters  of  fact  recognized  as  such.  Like  meaning  also  it  is  not 
related  to  things  as  they  are  related  to  each  other  in  terms  of 
time,  space,  cause  and  effect,  et  cetera.  Causality,  for  instance, 
is  an  intelligible  relation,  strictly  adapted  to  the  formation  of 
judgment;  but  as  an  intelligible  relation,  it  is  neither  the  cause 
nor  the  effect  of  anything  else.  The  same  arguments  apply  in 
the  case  of  space  and  time.  Judgment  is  not  another  thing  in 
space  nor  an  event  in  time.  In  the  judgment ' something  is  there 
now,'  which  is  perhaps  as  abstract  as  any  judgment,  we  immedi- 
ately note  that  'there'  is  distinguished  from  'here,'  and  'now* 
from  some  other  time,  past,  or  future,  or  both.  The  judgment, 
however,  is  neither  here  nor  there,  now  nor  then,  unless  we 
identify  the  written  or  spoken  words  with  the  act  of  knowledge, 
which  they  emphatically  are  not.  Judgment  is  rather  the  organic  ^ 
unity  of  differences;3  the  meaning  of  'now'  or  of  'this.'  We 
may,  therefore,  conclude  that  judgment  is  the  meaning  aspect  of 
things,  or,  if  we  prefer  it,  that  meaning  is  meaning  for  some-  j 
body,  i.  e.j  judgment. 

1  Perhaps  it  may  be  shown  that  meaning  is  sometimes  merely  apprehended  but 
unexpressed.  This  is,  however,  a  psychological  rather  than  a  logical  problem. 

*  Not  every  proposition  as  given  represents  a  meaning  in  the  mind  of  the  speaker 
or  writer,  but  every  intelligible  group  of  words  represents  a  meaning  for  somebody 
at  some  time. 

1  On  the  other  hand,  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  differences  which  are 
unified  in  the  judgment  remain  as  differences.  No  judgment  can  be  formed 
which  is  not  in  this  sense  both  universal  and  particular. 


38  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

Not  only  does  meaning  turn  out  to  be  the  same  as  judgment; 
but  when  we  reconsider  Green's  conception  of  fact  as  that  which 
has  meaning  we  see  at  once  that  even  a  fact  in  this  sense  is  already 
a  judgment.  The  truth  is  that  facts,  like  judgments,  are  beyond 
the  reach  of  the  mechanical  categories.  No  fact,  as  such,  exists 
in  space  or  time,  and  no  fact  is  the  cause  of  another  fact.  Facts 
exist  only  in  experience,  where  in  has  no  spatial  significance. 
The  world  of  facts  is,  therefore,  the  intelligible  world.  Space, 
time,  and  all  the  other  categories  are,  no  doubt,  indispensible 
principles  of  intelligibility,  but,  as  principles,  are  not  related  to 
intelligibility  in  a  further  hypothetical  space  and  time,  or  in  any 
external  fashion  whatever.  As  judgment  is,  for  Green,  the 
true  type  of  knowledge  or  experience,  it  can  "neither  be  consti- 
tuted by  events  of  which  it  is  the  experience,  nor  be  a  product  of 
them."1  But  such  a  statement  concerning  judgment  applies 
mutatis  mutandis  to  all  other  terms  which  explicitly  refer  to  the 
intelligible  aspect  of  the  universe.  Meaning,  judgment,  fact, 
are  neither  things  nor  events,  as  such,  but  the  intelligible  nature 
of  things  and  events.  Green's  actual  treatment  of  judgment 
ias,  therefore,  already  been  foreshadowed  in  his  treatment  of 
the  object  as  relation  and  of  facts  as  meaningful.  For  this  reason 
it  will  not  be  necessary  to  dwell  upon  the  subject  of  judgment  at 
length  in  this  chapter,  but  only  to  emphasize  certain  views, 
touched  upon  in  the  preceeding  chapters,  from  this  slightly 
modified  standpoint. 

First,  judgment  is  the  simplest  component  of  knowledge. 
This  view  is  exactly  parallel  to  the  theory  noted  above,  that  the 
unmeaning  fact  does  not  exist,  and  is  diametrically  opposed  to 
the  one  commonly  held  that  knowledge  is  built  up  out  of  sensa- 
tions, or  in  the  language  of  Locke,  out  of  'simple  ideas  which  we 
do  not  make  for  ourselves.'  According  to  the  latter  theory, 
judgment  is  a  "mechanical  combination  of  parts  which  remain 
outside  each  other."2  This  is  to  make  judgment  and  proposition 
virtually  synonymous.  Against  all  such  theories  Green  opposes 
the  view  that  "the  simplest  fact"  of  sense  impression  "is  already 

1  Prolegomena,  section  16. 

2  Bosanquet,  Logic  (second  edition),  I,  31. 


THE  IMPLICATIONS  OF  OBJECTIVITY.  39 

not  a  feeling  but  an  explanation  of  a  feeling."1  Following 
Locke,  British  classical  philosophy  held  firmly  to  the  'simple 
idea'  which  was  supposed  to  be  the  "datum  or  material  of  the 
mind,  upon  which  it  performs  certain  operations  as  upon  some- 
thing other  than  itself."2  "The  fact  is,"  says  Green,  "that  the 
simple  idea  with  Locke,  as  the  beginning  of  knowledge,  is  already 
at  its  minimum,  the  judgment,  I  have  an  idea  different  from  other 
ideas,  which  I  did  not  make  for  myself."3  Here  we  have  the 
keynote  of  Green's  criticism  of  sensationalism.  To  be  a  sensa- 
tion means  to  be  distinguished  from  other  sensations.  No  con- 
sciousness could  be  built  up  out  of  a  succession  of  present  im- 
pressions unless  the  present  were  in  some  sense  bound  up  with 
the  past  and  the  future.  Green's  own  language  is  vigorous  and 
conclusive:  "If  we  take  as  the  germ  of  intelligent  experience  the 
simple  consciousness  of  a  sensation,  this  can  only  be  expressed 
as  the  judgment  'something  is  here.'  The  'here,'  however,  is 
the  next  moment  a  'there';  the  one  sensation  is  superseded  by 
another."4  The  only  datum  of  sense  which  can  contribute  in 
any  way  to  knowledge  is,  therefore,  already  a  judgment;  or  in 
other  words,  the  judgment  is  the  simplest  element  of  knowledge.^/ 

Secondly,  judgment  is  a  process  of  individualization,  i.  e.,  the 
process  of  combining  unity  and  variety.  Reference  has  already 
been  made  to  the  process  of  definition  through  which  the  object 
gets  its  individuality.  But  definition  does  not  take  place  in 
abstraction  from  knowledge;  on  the  contrary,  it  is  only  in  and 
through  knowledge  that  definitions  arise.  To  define  the  object 
is  to  give  it  a  content,  not  merely  to  name  it.  Even  the  most 
abstract  definitions  of  formal  logic  reveal  this  essentially  concrete 
characteristic.  We  may  take,  as  an  instance,  the  de^nition, 
'Gold  is  a  yellow  metal  soluble  in  aqua  regia,'  in  which  we  have 
given  the  traditional  formal  requirements  of  a  definition — the 
genus  and  the  differentia.  It  is  to  be  noted,  however,  that  Gold 
is  not  merely  a  name,  as  would  be  the  case  if  we  should  say 
'  Gold  is  Gold ' ;  but  in  our  definition  Gold  is  arranged  or  given  a 

»i.  282. 
1 1, 19. 

« Ibid. 

4  III,  52.     Quoted  above,  p.  22. 


40  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

place  in  a  system  of  knowledge;  it  is  set  off  from  other  things. 
This  extreme  case  illustrates  the  principle  that  identity  and  differ- 
ence are  indispensible  to  even  the  most  unsatisfactory  definition 
which  can  be  called  a  definition  at  all.  Indeed,  the  same  thing 
may  be  discovered  in  the  nebulous  definitions  which  we  give  of 
our  vaguest  knowledge.  'A  stalactite  is  a  kind  of  stone/  or, 
'  Pumpernickel  is  a  kind  of  bread '  may  be  taken  as  examples  of 
the  barest  knowledge,  but  here  the  differentia,  if  not  quite 
explicit,  is,  nevertheless,  implied  in  the  phrase  'a  kind  of/  so 
common  in  everyday  speech.  Now  this  process  of  individu- 
alization,  or  of  giving  content  to  objects,  is  in  reality  judgment, 
for  in  the  same  sense  that  definition  individualizes  the  particular 
object  through  universal  relations,  judgment  holds  its  terms 
together,  but  at  the  same  time  holds  them  apart,  i.  e.,  it  deals 
with  identity  in  difference.  Green's  rejection  of  the  so-called 
equational  logic,  to  which  we  have  referred  on  a  previous  page, 
is  based  on  the  notion  that  judgment  is  a  great  deal  more  than  an 
expression  of  identity;  it  must  also  express  difference.  In 
Green's  own  words,  judgment  "integrates  just  so  far  as  it  differ- 
entiates. Beginning  with  a  simple  assertion  of  being  or  identity 
with  self,  A  is  A ,  it  goes  on  to  bring  A  into  relation  to  some  other 
object,  which  in  like  manner  has  been  arrested  in  its  flux,  .... 
This  relation  gives  a  contrast  and  difference.  A  is  not  B.  But 
as  not  B  it  is  something  more  than  mere  A .  The  difference  has 
not  taken  something  from  it  but  added  something  to  it.  It  has 
not  become  a  fraction  of  what  it  was  before  but  a  fuller  integer. 
It  is  no  longer  a  bare  unit,  but  a  unity  of  differences,  a  center  of 
manifold  relations,  a  subject  of  properties.  It  is  not  an  abstract 
universal,  but  it  has  an  element  of  universality  in  virtue  of  which 
it  can  be  brought  into  relation  to  all  things  else.  Its  universality 
is  the  condition  of  its  particularization."1 

This  brings  us  to  the  third,  and  for  the  present  purpose  the 
most  important,  characteristic  of  judgment.  Judgment  is  the 
germ  of  all  knowledge,  i.  e.,  any  judgment  is  capable  of  being 
developed  further  and  further  toward  an  ultimate  system  of 
knowledge.  This  is  again  exactly  parallel  with  Green's  conten- 

1  in,  63. 


THE  IMPLICATIONS  OF  OBJECTIVITY.  4! 

tion  that  the  object  is  capable  of  infinitely  numerous  determina- 
tions. His  belief  that  Aristotelian  logic  is  wrong  in  identifying 
the  first  definition  with  complete  definition  is  thus  borne  out  by 
his  own  positive  theory  of  the  development  of  judgment.  "The 
first  act  of  thinking  or  knowing,"  he  says,  "is  the  judgment 
'something  is,'  and  the  predicate  of  this  judgment,  'being,'  or  the 
simple  relation  which  it  expresses,  becomes  gradually  a  subject 
of  more  and  more  determinate  properties,  as  in  successive  judg- 
ments it  is  brought  into  new  relations."1  This  means  that  no 
judgment  is  self-sufficient;  that  it  is  never  complete,  but  always 
in  the  process  of  becoming  complete  by  breaking  down  or  giving 
way  to  a  further  and  more  concrete  judgment.  This  is,  indeed, 
but  the  other  side  of  his  contention  that  the  first  definition  of  an 
object  is  not  the  final  or  complete  one;  but  when  it  is  stated  in 
this  form  it  is  seen  to  be  essentially  identical  with  the  theory 
commonly  advanced  that  all  judgments  are  hypothetical.2 
Philosophy  has  practically  abandoned  the  hope  of  the  older 
rationalists  that  a  single  axiom  or  set  of  axioms  could  be  found 
from  which  all  other  judgments  may  be  deduced  after  the  manner 
of  Euclidean  geometry.  This  general  conviction,  however, 
admits  two  very  different  interpretations.  On  the  one  hand,  it 
leads  to  a  relativism  of  the  most  indefensible  variety.  No 
sooner  are  some  people  convinced  that  there  is  no  universal  and 
necessary  truth  than  they  straightway  conclude  that  there  is  no 
truth  at  all  in  the  sense  in  which  mankind  has  always  believed 
in  an  objective  truth. 

On  the  other  hand,  a  belief  in  the  hypothetical  character  of 
judgment  may  mean,  as  it  usually  does  in  logical  discussion, 
merely  that  any  given  judgment  is  essentially  finite  and  incom- 
plete. Such  an  interpretation,  while  holding  to  the  doctrine  of 
the  relativity  of  knowledge,  is  a  very  different  view  from  the  one 
commonly  called  relativism.  The  former  is  a  logical  or  critical 
methodology  and  leads  deeper  into  the  questions  of  philosophy; 
the  latter  is  uncritical  dogmatism  which  leads  nowhere,  except 

1  III,  60.  The  thought  expressed  in  this  passage  is  clearly  similar  to  the  general 
Hegelian  notion  of  the  process  of  dialectic. 

*Cf.  Bradley,  Appearance  and  Reality,  Chapter  XXIV,  p.  361;  Principles  of 
Logic,  Bk.  I,  Chapter  II;  Bosanquet,  Logic  (second  edition),  I,  88  ff.,  238  ff. 


42  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

perhaps  to  its  own  destruction.  No  thoroughgoing  thought  can 
long  remain  ignorant  of  the  far-reaching  implications  of  the 
doctrine  that  every  judgment  is  incomplete;  for  the  hypothetical 
and  categorical  aspects  of  judgment  can  be  neither  permanently 
nor  completely  separated.  They  hang  together  in  such  a  way 
that  both  must  be  recognized  in  any  true  account  of  knowledge. 
It  is  indeed  the  abstract  separation  of  the  two  which  has  brought 
about  the  absurdities  of  extreme  absolutism,  on  the  one  hand, 
and  extreme  relativism,  on  the  other.  Every  hypothetical  judg- 
ment, after  all,  is  intimately  connected  with  a  categorical  judg- 
ment, since  it  postulates  something  categorical  regarding  the 
nature  of  the  whole  of  reality.  This  has  been  variously  ex- 
pressed by  saying  that  the  ultimate  subject  of  every  judgment  is 
reality,1  or  that  every  judgment  claims  validity.  "All  hypo- 
thetical judgment,"  says  Bosanquet,  "rests  on  a  categorical 
basis.  That  is  to  say,  all  relativity  rests  on  an  absolute  datum 
and  all  necessity  on  fact.  .  .  .  Individuality  is  in  self-relation, 
Necessity  is  in  external  relation."2 

Green  fully  agrees  with  the  latter  interpretation  of  the  hypo- 
thetical nature  of  judgment.  Eevery  judgment  is,  indeed,  in- 
complete and  finite,  but  every  judgment  is  also  a  judgment  about 
the  real  nature  of  things.  The  'if  so — then  so'  gets  its  sig- 
nificance from  its  categorical  reference  to  reality.  While  recog- 
nizing, therefore,  that  all  given  judgments  are  incomplete  Green 
really  gives  his  attention  to  the  implication  of  such  a  doctrine. 
The  implication  is  briefly  this,  that  there  is  a  nature  of  things,  a 
reality  back  of  every  relativity,  through  which  the  relativity  gets 
its  meaning;  that  finitude,  by  its  very  nature,  looks  beyond 
itself  to  a  completion  of  itself  in  the  infinite.3  In  his  philosophy 

1  Cf.  Bosanquet,  Logic,  I,  71  ff.,  and  Bradley,  Principles  of  Logic,  p.  365  ff. 

2  Logic,  I,  241-242.     See  also  I,  225.     "We  have  self-relation,  existence,  or  a 
categorical  aspect,  and  external  relation,  necessity,  or  a  hypothetical  aspect." 

3  Bosanquet  speaks  in  this  connection  of  the  self  as  a  "finite-infinite  being." 
Cf.  The  Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Individual  (1913).     Although  a  later  chapter  will 
deal  specifically  with  the  relation  of  the  finite  and  the  infinite,  attention  may  be 
called  at  this  point  to  the  direct  bearing  which  Green's  theory  of  the  incomplete 
character  of  judgment  must  have  upon  his  ultimate  conception  of  God.     Judgment 
is  not  only  incomplete,  but  it  is  becoming  more  complete.     Whatever  Green's  notion 
of  God  may  prove  to  be,  we  may  be  quite  sure  that  his  God  is  to  be  found,  if  at 


THE  IMPLICATIONS  OF  OBJECTIVITY.  43 

the  emphasis  is  frankly  laid  on  the  ideally  complete  system  as  a 
basis  for  the  successive  steps  of  the  judging  activity  rather  than 
upon  the  finite  character  of  each  of  the  successive  steps.  If  he 
tends  to  emphasize  the  categorical  basis  of  hypothetical  judg- 
ments rather  more  than  later  writers  do,  it  is  chiefly  because  his 
interest  is  clearly  with  what  Bosanquet  has  called  "individuality 
as  self-relation"  rather  than  with  "relativity  as  external 
relation." 

In  the  foregoing  argument  we  have  constantly  observed 
Green's  recourse  to  an  explanatory  principle  other  than  the  terms 
of  the  phenomenal  series.  How  shall  we  conceive  this  principle? 
Regardless  of  the  particular  word  which  he  uses,  whether  mean- 
ing, fact,  relation,  or  judgment,  he  never  fails  to  call  attention 
to  a  phase  of  experience  or  a  principle  within  experience  which 
defies  classification  as  one  of  the  natural  objects.  We  would  go 
astray  in  thinking  of  this  principle  of  relation  or  meaning  as 
outside  of,  or  beyond  the  series;  but  yet  we  are  not  permitted 
to  identify  it  with  any  member  of  the  series  or  with  their  sum. 
It  is  a  principle  of  organization  throughout  the  series.  One  fact 
does  not  exist  for  another,  nor  does  the  relation  between  the 
two  exist  for  a  third  fact,  nor  yet  for  a  fusion  of  the  first  two. 
The  several  facts  exist  together  and  yet  they  retain  their  sever- 
alty.  When  matters  of  fact  are  recognized  as  such,  we  have  to  do 
with  a  synthesis  involving  more  than  a  sum,  or  mere  aggregate 
of  parts ;  we  do  indeed  have  unity,  but  a  unity  in  which  the  parts 
are  organized.  On  the  other  hand,  we  have  a  variety  in  which 
unity  is  immanent.  Such  a  unity  in  variety  in  the  case  of 
objects  has  been  previously  designated  'individuality'  which 
at  once  suggests  the  possibility  of  applying  the  category  of 
individuality  to  our  concrete  experience.  Is  it  not  probable  that 
individuality  characterizes  experience  as  a  whole  just  as  it  does 
the  items  of  experience  which  we  have  examined?  If  we  answer 
in  the  affirmative  we  must  say  that  objects  are  not  only  indi- 
viduals through  relation,  but  the  experience  of  a  world  of  objects, 

all,  at  the  end  of  a  series  of  judgments,  progressively  more  and  more  concrete.  It 
is  to  be  kept  steadily  in  mind  that  Green  is  fully  committed  to  a  conception  of  the 
infinite,  or  absolute,  as  the  result  of  a  process  of  greater  and  greater  determination 
rather  than  as  the  outcome  of  a  process  of  abstraction. 


44  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

i.  e.,  the  system  of  relations  which  we  know,  is  itself  an  individual 
combining  unity  and  variety.  This  is,  in  fact,  the  hypothesis 
upon  which  Green's  further  speculation  proceeds.  From  now 
on  we  shall  be  concerned  in  tracing  his  attempt  to  deal  with 
finite  experience  and  eventually  with  the  ideally  complete  experi- 
ence in  terms  of  individuality. 

This  individuality  of  experience  is,  moreover,  uniformly 
treated  as  a  principle,  not  as  a  thing.  Green  sometimes  expresses 
this  idea  by  saying  that  in  experience,  or  reality,  there  is  a 
'spiritual  principle'  which  cannot  be  accounted  for  by  a  natural 
history.  In  dealing  with  concrete  experience  we  leave  the  plane 
of  things  and  strive  for  the  plane  of  principles;  for  wherever  we 
find  facts  or  a  distinction  between  truth  and  falsehood,  i.  e., 
wherever  we  have  the  function  of  judgment,  Green  believes  that 
we  may  justly  assume  that  we  have  to  deal  with  a  spiritual 
principle  rather  than  with  a  natural  thing. 

The  spiritual  principle,  however,  refers  to  no  supernatural 
entity,  or  substance,  or  power  of  any  kind,  but  is  simply  a  way  of 
designating  the  aspect  of  meaning  or  organization  in  what- 
soever is.  Green's  contention,  therefore,  that  there  is  a  spiritual 
principle  in  nature  is  only  that  nature  to  its  remotest  parts  means 
something;  there  is  no  place  for  the  unrelated,  unmeaning  thing- 
in-itself.  No  'natural  history'  can  be  given  of  this  spiritual 
principle  in  nature;  for  the  immanent  relation  must  be  presup- 
posed as  the  condition  of  tracing  its  origin.  His  contention  that 
there  is  a  spiritual  principle  in  knowledge  is,  again,  simply  that 
knowledge  to  its  remotest  element  is  meaningful,  or  in  the  form 
of  judgment.  There  is  no  place  for  the  unmeaning  fact,  the 
unmediated  datum  of  sense.  The  particular  in  both  cases  is 
already,  through  meaning,  more  than  a  mere  particular;  it  is, 
in  fact,  a  universal  particular — the  individual,  i.  e.,  the  particular 
universalized  through  relations  which  constitute  its  individuality. 

With  such  a  principle  of  organization  we  are  familiar  in  what 
we  know  as  our  intelligence.  Our  consciousness  is,  so  to  speak, 
at  the  center  of  the  individuality  of  experience.  The  relations, 
and  the  judgments  expressive  of  them  are  focused  in  a  self- 
conscious,  intelligent  subject.  The  whole  rational,  purposive 


THE   IMPLICATIONS  OF  OBJECTIVITY.  45 

agent,  the  subject  of  these  objects  of  experience  is  thus  literally 
implied — folded  up — in  such  objectivity.  This  is  at  once  a 
unique  and  a  new  factor  in  the  problem  before  us  of  getting  at  the 
nature  of  experience.  "No  one  and  no  number  of  a  series  of 
related  events,"  says  Green,  in  emphatic  summary,  "can  be  the 
consciousness  of  the  series  as  related."1 

We  have  now  shown  that  the  relation  which  exists  between 
objects  is  already  meaning  or  judgment;  it  does  not  have  to  wait 
to  be  put  into  words.  But  judgment  or  relation  is  a  reality  of  a 
unique  character.  Hitherto  we  have  been  dealing  with  objects 
related  to  one  another;  but  when  we  consider  the  relation  itself 
we  find  that  the  relation  is  not  related  as  object  to  object.  It  is 
throughout  the  series,  but  not  a  member  of  the  series.  It  is  not 
a  fact,  but  the  meaning  of  fact.  The  meaning  of  fact,  however, 
does  not  exist  for  another  fact,  nor  for  a  sum  of  facts,  but  for  a 
principle  through  which  they  are  significant,  i.  e.,  through  which 
they  are  facts.  Such  a  principle  has  been  tentatively  identified 
with  what  we  know  as  our  intelligence — in  a  word,  with  con- 
sciousness in  its  broadest  sense.  It  is  this  implied  "conscious- 
ness of  the  series  as  related"  which  we  have  next  to  examine 
more  in  detail. 

1  Prolegomena,  section  16. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

THE   INDIVIDUALITY   OF   THE   SUBJECT. 

IN  harmony  with  Green's  plan  to  found  the  theory  of  con- 
sciousness upon  an  examination  of  objects,  the  discussion,  up  to 
this  point,  has  been  carried  on  as  far  as  possible  without  reference 
to  a  theory  of  consciousness.  Objectivity,  however,  has  been 
shown  to  involve  a  principle  of  organization,  not  itself  one  of 
the  objects,  but  that  through  which  objects  are  possible.  This 
principle  of  organization  has  also  been  tentatively  identified  with 
consciousness.  The  purpose  of  this  chapter  is  to  examine 
Green's  conception  of  consciousness  somewhat  more  in  detail  and 
especially  to  show  how  consciousness,  as  the  subject  of  knowledge, 
is  distinguished  in  his  system  from  the  objects  of  knowledge. 

There  are  two  typical  methods  of  dealing  with  consciousness. 
First,  it  may  be  treated  as  an  inner  being  or  ego,  of  the  existence 
of  which  we  are  immediately  certain.  This  view  is  typified  by 
the  Cartesian  expression  cogito  ergo  sum.  Second,  it  may  be 
treated  as  an  object  of  knowledge,  subject  to  observation  and 
quasi-mechanical  explanation.  The  second  view  is  typified  by 
the  procedure  of  Locke,  who  believed  that  he  could  discover  the 
.nature  of  consciousness  by  'looking  within  his  own  mind  to  see 
#iow  it  wrought.'  Both  of  these  extreme  views  are  rejected  by 
'Green,  as  we  shall  see  in  what  immediately  follows.  In  opposi- 
tion to  the  former,  he  holds  that  knowledge  of  consciousness,  far 
from  being  given  to  us  intuitively  as  an  immediate  certainty,  is 
arrived  at  only  after  a  severe  process  of  reflection,  and  the  medi- 
ation of  thought.  In  opposition  to  the  latter,  he  holds  that 
living  consciousness  is  never  an  object  but  always  the  subject 
•of  knowledge.  In  support  of  the  latter  thesis  he  proposes  to 
show  that  whenever  consciousness  is  made  an  object  of  knowledge 
It  is  falsified ;  that  when  it  is  explained  in  quasi-mechanical  terms 
its  spirit  is  gone,  leaving  only  an  empty  husk  behind.1 

1  Compare  with  this  Bergson's  statement  that  psychology  can  never  deal  with 
the  true  moi  qui  dure.  The  ultimate  self  eludes  the  grasp  of  the  categories  appro- 

46 


THE   INDIVIDUALITY  OF   THE   SUBJECT.  47 

Philosophies  of  the  first  type  have  taken  various  forms,  but 
there  are  some  general  features  common  to  all.  They  agree  in 
treating  the  existence  of  the  self  as  more  certain  than  anything 
else.  They  are  ready  with  Descartes  to  doubt  the  existence  of 
all  objects  in  the  whole  world  but  to  hold  to  the  existence  of  a 
doubter.1  The  self,  or  subject,  thus  obtained  is  a  pure,  somewhat 
mystical  'ego,'  given  to  us,  we  are  told,  by  a  sort  of  immediate 
intuitition.  By  taking  this  intuitive  self-knowledge  as  a  starting 
point  we  are  supposed  to  be  able  to  deduce  all  other  knowledge 
from  it;  it  alone  being  the  root  of  the  tree  of  knowledge.2 

We  have  already  seen  that  Green  distrusts  such  a  philosophy,3 
for  it  makes  a  wrong  beginning  which  has  laid  idealism  open  to 
the  charge  of  subjectivism.  Common  sense  has  fortunately 
refused  to  accept  such  a  theory,  because  common  sense  is  really 
much  more  immediately  aware  of  objects  than  of  a  self.  With- 
out the  doubtful  aid  of  a  formal  dialectic  no  man  doubts  the 
existence  of  an  objective  world,  although  many  men  remain 
strangely  unaware  of  selfhood.4  So  far,  it  is  safer  to  follow  the 
lead  of  plain  thinking.  If  either  term  is  to  be  deduced  we  may 
more  properly  begin  with  the  object  than  with  the  subject. 
No  conscious  being  can  be  ignorant  of  an  objective  world;  for 
consciousness  is  first  of  all  concerned  with  content.  On  the  other 
hand,  although  consciousness  would  be  impossible  without  its 
subjective  aspect,  the  subject  is  hidden,  as  it  were,  beneath  the 
objective  order.  The  consciousness  of  selfhood  is  the  goal  or 
result  of  thinking,  rather  than  its  beginning.  We  become  aware 

priate  to  a  space  world  of  identities.  Up  to  this  point  Bergson  and  Green  are  in 
direct  agreement.  They  do  not,  however,  agree  in  a  positive  characterization  of 
consciousness.  Bergson  tends  to  place  consciousness  beyond  thought  and  to  treat 
it  as  an  object  of  immediate  intuition,  while  Green  simply  places  it  beyond  this 
type  of  thinking,  although  not  beyond  all  rational  conception,  as  we  shall  point 
out  below. 

1  Cf.  Bergson,  Creative  Evolution  (Mitchell's  translation,  1911),  p.  I. 

1  The  classic  example  of  this  position  is,  of  course,  found  in  Descartes. 

8  Cf.  Chapter  I. 

4  Cf.  J.  M.  Baldwin,  Social  and  Ethical  Interpretations  (4th  edition);  also  Royce, 
Studies  in  Good  and  Evil  (1899),  pp.  143  ff.  Royce  quotes  Fichte's  declaration 
that  "Most  men  could  be  more  easily  brought  to  believe  themselves  a  piece  of 
lava  in  the  moon  than  to  regard  themselves  as  a  self,"  p.  148;  James  Ward, 
The  Realm  of  Ends  (1911),  p.  128  ff. 


48  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

of  it  only  after  a  certain  stage  in  the  development  of  knowledge 
has  been  reached. 

The  other  type  of  philosophy,  of  which  Locke  may  be  taken  as 
a  typical  representative,  looks  upon  consciousness  as  the  subject 
matter  of  the  science  of  psychology.     From  this  point  of  view 
ideas  are  regarded  as  phenomena  of  consciousness,  and  con- 
sciousness itself,  as  an  object  of  knowledge,1  which  may  be  de- 
scribed or  otherwise  dealt  with  as  the  purposes  of  the  science 
dictate.     For  Locke  the  task  of  philosophy  was  compassed  by 
looking  within  his  own  mind  to  see  how  it  wrought.     Hume 
later  essayed  the  task  of  building  a  true  "science  of  man"  upon 
the  basis  of  observed  experience,  to  take  the  place  of  "any 
hypothesis,  that  pretends  to  discover  the  ultimate  original  quali- 
ties of  human  nature."2     But  the  experience  within  which  he 
proposes  to  confine  his  investigations  turns  out  to  be  an  experi- 
ence objectified,  anatomized,  in  short,  an  object  of  knowledge 
rather   than   the   concrete   living   reality   of   knowledge   itself. 
"For  to  me  it  seems  evident,"  writes  Hume  in  the  '  Introduction' 
to  A  Treatise  of  Human  Nature,  "that  the  essence  of  mind  being 
equally  unknown  to  us  with  that  of  external  bodies,  it  must  be 
equally  impossible  to  form  any  notion  of  its  powers  and  qualities 
otherwise  than  from  careful  and  exact  experiments,   and   the 
observation  of  those  particular  effects,  which  result  from  its  differ- 
ent circumstances  and  situations."3     The  assumption  of  both 
Locke  and  Hume  seems  to  be  that  if  consciousness  is  to  be  known 
at  all  our  knowledge  of  it  must  somehow  be  gained  by  what  they 
term  'observation.'     Hume  contrasts  the  knowledge  gained  by 
observation  which  is  to  result  in  a  'science  of  man,'  with  the 
hypothetical  or  speculative  knowledge  of  philosophers  which 
results  only  in  pretended  knowledge  of  the  ultimate  qualities  of 
human  nature.     Although  Hume  was  doubtless  right  in  rejecting 
the  pretentious  speculations  of  metaphysicians  who  gloried  in  the 
fact  that  their  theories  were  uncontaminated  by  contact  with 
experience,  he  certainly  was  wrong  in  supposing  that  observation 

1  Cf.  Creative  Evolution,  p.  i  ff.     Bergson's  treatment  of  consciousness  seems  to 
illustrate  both  the  intuitive  and  the  psychological  method. 

2  A  Treatise  of  Human  Nature  (Selby-Bigge  edition,  1896),  p.  xxi. 

9  A  Treatise  of  Human  Nature  (Selby-Bigge  edition,  1896),  p.  xxi.     Italics  mine. 


THE  INDIVIDUALITY  OF   THE   SUBJECT.  49 

and  experiment  could  answer  all  the  legitimate  questions  which 
arise  regarding  the  nature  of  consciousness,  or  experience  in 
general. 

There  is  a  sense  surely  in  which  consciusness  may  become 
the  object  of  knowledge,  but  there  is  also  a  sense  in  which  the 
consciousness  of  objects  is  properly  distinguished  from  the  objects 
of  consciousness.  It  always  takes  a  consciousness  to  observe  a 
consciousness,  or  in  more  technical  language,  there  is  a  logical 
as  well  as  a  psychological  aspect  of  consciousness.  It  is  the 
logical  question  which  interests  Green.  Admitting  freely  that 
consciousness  may  be  an  object  of  knowledge,  he  goes  on  to 
inquire  about  consciousness  as  the  subject  of  knowledge.  Psy- 
chology is  certainly  a  worthy  science,  but  there  is  a  prior  and  more 
fundamental  business  for  philosophy  than  the  business  of  observ- 
ing and  describing  consciousness.  Philosophers  must  relate 
consciousness  to  the  universe  which  consciousness  knows  and  in 
which  it  has  the  power  of  placing  itself  among  its  own  objects. 
A  metaphysic  of  consciousness  is,  therefore,  just  as  much  needed 
as  a  psychology  of  consciousness,  and,  for  better  or  for  worse, 
it  does  pretend  "to  discover  the  ultimate  original  qualities  of 
human  nature"  which  lie  beyond  the  arbitrary  limits  of  obser- 
vation implied  in  Hume's  definition  of  experience,  although  not, 
of  course,  beyond  experience  more  broadly  conceived.  The 
'consciousness'  in  which  Green  is  interested,  therefore,  is  not 
the  self  or  consciousness  with  which  psychology  deals.  Such  a 
consciousness,  by  hypothesis,  is,  and  remains,  an  object  of 
knowledge:  it  is  the  being  whom  I  know,  rather  than  'I' 
who  know.  Green  most  emphatically  declares  that  he  is  not 
concerned  with  the  'phenomena  of  consciousness.'  "The  phe- 
nomena of  matter,  the  phenomena  of  consciousness,  the  con- 
nection between  the  two  sets  of  phenomena,"  he  writes,  "equally 
belong  to  an  objective  world,  of  which  the  objectivity  is  only 
possible  for  a  subject."1  He  is  concerned  with  the  subject  of 
knowledge,  which,  though  not  at  first  as  apparent  as  the  object, 
is  later  seen  to  be  the  very  condition  of  the  possibility  of  the 
objective  world.  The  subject  of  knowledge  is,  he  says,  that 

1 1.  387. 


50  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

"which  we  do  not  know  but  are,  and  through  which  we  know."1 
This  statement  does  not  commit  Green  to  any  form  of  agnosticism 
regarding  the  nature  of  the  self;  for  the  point  which  he  is  empha- 
sizing is  that  the  self  is  not  to  be  known  as  one  object  among 
others  by  means  of  the  mechanical  categories.  In  what  sense 
it  is  known,  and  under  what  category,  will  best  appear  by  an 
elimination  of  some  of  the  categories  which  serve  an  excellent 
purpose  in  dealing  with  objects,  but  which  show  themselves  to  be 
inadequate  whenever  an  attempt  is  made  to  apply  them  to  the 
nature  of  the  subject. 

"The  dominant  notion  of  the  self  in  Locke,"  says  Green,  "is 
that  of  the  inward  substance,  or  'substratum  of  ideas,'  coordinate 
with  the  outward."2  Here  we  have  the  very  root  of  the  Lockean 
philosophy,  to  the  destruction  of  which  Green  set  himself  in  the 
Introduction  to  Hume's  Treatise  of  Human  Nature.  "There  are 
two  propositions  on  which  Locke  is  constantly  insisting,"  he 
says,  "one,  that  the  object  of  his  investigation  is  his  own  mind, 
the  other,  that  his  attitude  toward  this  object  is  that  of  mere 
observation.  He  speaks  of  his  own  mind,  it  is  to  be  noticed, 
just  as  he  might  of  his  own  body.  .  .  .  He,  just  as  much  as  the 
untutored  Cartesian,  regarded  the  '  minds '  of  different  men  as  so 
many  different  things."3  The  legitimate  outcome  of  such  a  con- 
ception of  the  self  is  found  in  Hume's  famous  testimony:  "For 
my  part,  when  I  enter  most  intimately  into  what  I  call  myself, 
I  always  stumble  on  some  particular  perception  or  other,  .  .  . 
I  never  can  catch  myself  at  any  time  without  a  perception,  and 
never  can  observe  anything  but  the  perception."4  Any  attempt 
such  as  Hume's  is  foredoomed  to  failure  because  it  sets  out  in 
quest  of  that  which  is  not  to  be  found  in  heaven  or  earth,  viz., 
a  substance  without  attributes.  But  it  is  especially  futile  to 
search  for  consciousness  under  the  form  of  substance;  for  it  is 
through  consciousness  that  substance  gets  whatever  meaning 
it  has. 

Regardless  of  the  terms  in  which  it  may  be  defined,  substance 

1  in,  267. 

2  I,   108. 

»I,  6. 

4  A  Treatise  of  Human  Nature,  p.  252.     Cf.  p.  635. 


THE   INDIVIDUALITY  OF   THE  SUBJECT.  51 

is  sure  to  be  conceived  as  a  thing;  if  not  in  space,  at  least  coordi- 
nate with  things  in  space.  It  is  something  which  excludes 
something  else.  Substances  may  be  lined  up  in  a  row  and  num- 
bered or  labeled  by  intelligence.  Substance  is  clearly  an  object 
of  knowledge,  and  no  qualification  of  substance  as  'thinking* 
can  redeem  it  from  its  position  as  an  object  of  knowledge  to  a 
position  as  a  subject  of  knowledge.  The  subject  of  knowledge 
and  the  object  of  knowledge  are  as  eternally  distinct  as  the  two 
ends  of  a  stick  are  distinct.1  A  philosophy,  therefore,  which 
treats  mind  as  an  inner  substance  treats  it  merely  as  an  object 
of  knowledge.  Mind,  which  constitutes  both  the  inner  and  the 
outer,  is,  in  the  language  of  Green,  "treated  as  itself  the  inner 
'substratum  which  it  accustoms  itself  to  suppose.'  It  thus 
becomes  the  creature  of  its  own  suppositions.  Nor  is  this  all. 
This,  indeed,  is  no  more  than  the  fate  which  it  must  suffer  at  the 
hands  of  every  philosopher  who,  in  Kantian  language,  brings  the 
source  of  the  Categories  under  the  Categories."2  Even  if  an 
object  could  be  supposed  to  know  itself  as  a  substance  among 
other  similar  objects,  the  knowledge  thereof  would  still  remain 
something  quite  different  from  a  substance.  Or  suppose  we 
agree  to  treat  the  self  as  a  thing  which  has  a  consciousness  of 
objects,  we  do  not  in  the  least  advance  toward  giving  an  account 
of  the  consciousness  of  which  the  self  is  thus  made  a  bearer. 
Whether  or  not  we  are  convinced  that  the  self  is  a  thing,  we  still 
face  the  ultimate  fact  of  the  consciousness  of  objects,  and  this 
consciousness  itself  refuses  to  be  treated  as  a  thing.  However 
far  we  force  the  matter  back,  we  are  driven  sooner  or  later  to 
admit  a  definite  and  fundamental  difference  between  objects  and 
consciousness  of  objects.  We  discover,  moreover,  that  nothing 
whatever  is  to  be  gained  by  the  device  of  supposing  a  substance 
as  a  supporter  or  possessor  of  consciousness.  Such  a  super- 
numerary has  long  been  on  the  retired  list  in  philosophical  dis- 
cussion. We  will  therefore  avoid  pedantry  by  continuing  to  use 
1  consciousness '  and  '  self '  as  synonymous  terms. 

1  Cf.  Hegel's  criticism  of  Spinoza's  conception  of  substance  and  his  estimate 
of  the  advance  made  by  philosophy  when  it  came  to  deal  with  'subject.'  Logic, 
translated  by  Wallace,  sec.  151. 

»I.  no. 


52  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

Any  theory  which  looks  upon  the  self  as  an  inner  substance 
is,  moreover,  destined  to  become  involved  in  the  false  antithesis 
of  an  'internal'  and  an  'external'  world.  These  two  worlds 
represent  what  we  usually  understand  by  the  psychical  and  the 
physical.  The  so-called  internal  world  is  the  world  of  subjective 
experience,  psychic  states,  etc.,  while  the  external  world  is  the 
world  of  space  and  matter.  No  one  can  deny  that  the  psychical 
and  the  physical  are  properly  distinguished,  but  what  meaning 
can  we  attach  to  the  epithets  'internal'  and  'external'?  We 
might  as  well  call  the  one  blue  and  the  other  red.  This  antithesis 
gets  its  force  from  our  tendency  to  think  of  consciousness  as  an 
object  of  knowledge.  But  whenever  psychic  states  are  treated 
as  objects  of  knowledge  they  are  exactly  coordinate  with  all 
other  objects  of  knowledge  and  come  under  the  same  rubrics.1 
The  moment  we  pass,  however,  from  mind  as  an  object  of  know- 
ledge to  mind  as  the  subject  of  knowledge  we  must  use  different 
tactics.  The  subject  of  knowledge  cannot  be  a  thing  or  sub- 
stance. The  so-called  external  world  may,  indeed,  be  external 
to  the  human  body,  inasmuch  as  the  body  also  is  in  space;  but 
how  can  it  be  external  to  the  consciousness  of  externality?  To 
speak  of  things  as  "outside  the  mind"  is  "nonsense,"  says 
Green.2 

Space  or  extension  is  real  as  the  "relation  of  mutual  ex- 
ternality."3 But  the  relation  of  '  mutual  externality '  is  meaning, 
judgment,  knowledge,  and  is,  therefore,  not  inside  or  outside  of 
anything.4  It  is  quite  appropriate  to  speak  of  a  consciousness 
of  space,  but  perfectly  unmeaning  to  speak  of  a  consciousness  in 
space.  '  Things '  unquestionably  exist  in  space,  but  consciousness 

1  Much  discussion  of  the  relation  of  mind  and  body  has  never  risen  above  the 
plane  of  weighing  one  object  over  against  another.  In  such  discussions  there  is  a 
constant  tendency  to  treat  mind  as  an  object  of  knowledge.  (Cf.  Bradley,  Appear- 
ance and  Reality,  Chapter  XXIII.)  For  this  reason  it  is  better  to  substitute 
Green's  terms  'subject'  and  'object'  for  'mind'  and  'body'  of  the  older  dispu- 
tations. 

2 II,  200;  also  I,  482,  and  Prolegomena,  sections  60  and  64. 

8 1,  228;  also  II,  16. 

*Cf.  Prolegomena,  sections  52  and  60.  Cf.  Bergson's  statement:  "To  ask 
whether  the  universe  exists  only  in  our  thought,  or  outside  of  our  thought,  is  to 
put  the  problem  in  terms  that  are  insoluble,  even  if  we  suppose  them  to  be  intel- 
ligible;" Matter  and  Memory  (translated  by  Paul  and  Palmer,  1911),  p.  13. 


THE  INDIVIDUALITY  OF  THE  SUBJECT.  53 

as  subject  is  not  a  'thing.'  Nothing  is  to  be  gained  by  such  a 
confusion  between  thought  and  its  object.  They  are  eternally 
distinguished,  although  never  separated,  or  separable.  Their 
distinction,  however,  can  not  be  put  in  quasi-spatial  terms;  one 
is  not  'here,'  the  other  'there,'  nor  is  one  'this*  and  the  other 
'that.'  Green  has  summed  up  his  distinction  between  things 
and  the  consciousness  of  things  in  the  following  language:  "A 
motion  can  only  be  a  motion,  or  a  configuration  a  configuration, 
for  a  subject  to  which  every  stage  of  the  one,  every  part  of  the 
other,  is  equally  present  with  the  rest;  and  what  is  such  a  subject 
but  conscious?"1 

The  attempt  to  conceive  the  mind  as  an  inner  substance  fails, 
therefore,  because  it  is  an  attempt  to  spatialize  the  meaning  or 
knowledge  of  space.  A  corresponding  error  results  from  an 
attempt  to  place  consciousness  in  time.  As  the  older  British 
philosophy  had  undertaken  an  account  of  the  self  in  terms  of 
substance,  so  the  newer  philosophy,  that  of  Green's  own  time, 
was  trying  to  conceive  consciousness  in  terms  of  an  event.  Con- 
sciousness was  to  be  explained  by  reference  to  events  which 
preceded  it.  It  was  to  take  its  place  in  the  evolutionary  series 
as  one  step  in  the  progress.  Against  all  this  Green  raises  his 
characteristic  protest:  Consciousness  cannot  be  a  member  of  the 
series  of  events  of  which  it  is  the  consciousness.  Phenomena  are 
always  in  time,  but  meaning  or  the  consciousness  of  phenomena 
is  not  a  phenomenon.2  Nothing  in  Green's  philosophy  has 
caused  more  perplexity  than  his  contention  that  a  'natural 
history '  of  consciousness  is  impossible.3  This  has  been  taken  as 
a  denial  of  the  general  laws  of  biological  evolution.  While  there 
is  no  real  basis  for  such  a  supposition,  it  must  be  admitted  that 
Green  allows  himself  to  use  expressions  which,  if  taken  by  them- 
selves, could  be  so  interpreted.  He  distinctly  declares,  for 

1  I.  379- 

*  Prolegomena,  sec.  57. 

1  By  '  natural  history '  Green  referred  to  the  kind  of  genetic  account  which 
seeks  to  place  a  phenomenon  in  a  temporal  series,  to  tell  what  preceded  it,  or  when 
it  arose  in  a  larger  history.  Such  a  history  may  indeed  be  written  about  con- 
sciousness in  so  far  as  consciousness  is  a  phenomenon,  but  it  is  altogether  beside 
the  mark  or  even  impossible  when  we  study  consciousness  as  subject. 


54  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

instance,  that  man  is  not  a  part  of  nature.1  That  the  spirit  of 
such  a  declaration,  however,  transcends  the  letter  is  made 
perfectly  evident  by  his  qualification  of  the  word  'man.'  It  is 
man  "for  whom  there  is  a  cosmos  of  experience"  of  whom  no 
'natural  history'  can  be  written,  or  it  is  the  "principle  in  man 
which  knows  nature"  that  is  not  to  be  looked  upon  as  a  'part  of 
nature.'  When  the  matter  is  put  in  this  way  the  contention  that 
a  'natural  history'  of  consciousness  is  impossible  becomes  not 
only  defensible,  but  quite  unquestionable  or  even  commonplace. 
In  whatever  sense  man  is  a  member  of  the  biological  series  man 
is  a  part  of  nature ;  but  there  is  a  sense  in  which  man  is  a  knower 
of  the  series,  a  formulator  of  its  laws,  and  it  is  in  the  latter  sense 
that  he  is  not  "an  event  or  the  product  of  an  event."  Green's 
contention,  that  the  knower  is  not  in  time,  is  preposterous  if  the 
'  knower '  means  the  psychic  individual '  who  rides  in  a  coach  from 
Oxford  to  London,'  but  the  'knower'  with  which  Green  is  con- 
cerned means  nothing  of  the  kind.  The  'knower'  means  for 
him  not  only  the  logical  or  metaphyscial  subject  of  knowledge; 
but  it  means  that  subject  in  its  peculiar  and  single  character  of 
subjectivity. 

"There  could  be  no  such  thing  as  time,"  says  Green,  plainly 
enough,  "if  there  were  not  a  self -consciousness  which  is  not  in 
time."2  It  must  be  remembered  that  'self-consciousness* 
is  not  the  man  who  rides  in  a  coach,  or  who  was  born  on  a  certain 
day.  Each  man  is  born,  passes  through  certain  changes,  and 
dies.  Such  facts  are  not  here  in  question.  Nor  are  we  discussing 
mere  change  as  it  occurs  in  psychic  processes ;  but  the  question  is, 
What  is  presupposed  in  the  'consciousness  of  change'?3  It  is 
the  consciousness  of  change  which  he  declares  can  "neither  be 
constituted  by  events  of  which  it  is  the  experience,  nor  be  a 
product  of  them."4  In  a  similar  argument  he  writes:  "We  may 
decide  all  the  questions  that  have  been  debated  between  materi- 
alists and  spiritualists  as  to  the  explanation  of  particular  facts 
in  favor  of  the  former,  but  the  possibility  of  explaining  them  at 

1  Prolegomena,  sec.  5. 

2  Ibid.,  sec.  52.     See  also  I,  128. 
8  Ibid.,  sec.  15  and  16. 

4  Ibid.,  sec.  16. 


THE  INDIVIDUALITY  OF   THE  SUBJECT.  55 

all  will  still  remain  to  be  explained.  We  shall  still  be  logically 
bound  to  admit  that  in  a  man  who  can  know  a  nature — for 
whom  there  is  a  '  cosmos  of  experience ' — there  is  a  principle  which 
is  not  natural  and  which  cannot  without  a  vo-repov  irporepov  be 
explained  as  we  explain  the  facts  of  nature."1  "That  which 
happens,"  he  says,  "whether  we  reckon  it  an  inward  or  an  out- 
ward, a  physical  or  a  psychical  event — and  nothing  but  an  event 
can,  properly  speaking,  be  observed — is  as  such  in  time.  But 
the  presence  of  consciousness  to  itself,  though,  as  the  true 
'punctum  stans'  (Locke,  Essay  II,  Chap.  XVII,  sec.  16)  it  is 
the  condition  of  the  observation  of  events  in  time,  is  not  such 
an  event  itself.  In  the  ordinary  and  proper  sense  of  '  fact,'  it  is 
not  a  fact  at  all,  nor  yet  a  possible  abstraction  from  facts."2 
In  a  similar  connection  he  writes,  "some  suspicion  may  perhaps 
be  created  that  a  natural  history  of  self -consciousness,  and  of  the 
conceptions  by  which  it  makes  the  world  its  own,  is  impossible, 
since  such  a  history  must  be  of  events,  and  self -consciousness  is 
not  reducible  to  a  series  of  events."3  "Should  the  question  be 
still  asked,"  says  Nettleship,  in  his  Memoir  of  Green,  "If  the 
self-consciousness  implied  in  moral  action  is  not  derived  from 
nature  or  circumstances,  what  then  is  its  origin?  the  answer  must 
be  that  it  has  no  origin.  '  It  never  began  because  it  never  was 
not.  It  is  the  condition  of  there  being  such  a  thing  as  beginning 
or  end.'"4 

Such  statements  are  likely  to  excite  suspicion  in  the  minds 
of  those  who  are  accustomed  to  rely  upon  evolutionary  explana- 
tion as  the  only  valid  and  sufficient  solution  of  human  problems; 
and  they  appear  especially  objectionable  when  taken  out  of 
their  context  and  allowed  to  stand  as  bald  assertions.  A  more 
careful  interpretation  of  Green's  language  and  a  more  sympa- 
thetic appreciation  of  his  spirit  will,  however,  dispel  these  mis- 
understandings. The  "eternal  self"  may  not  be  such  a  fearful 

1  Prolegomena,  sec.  9.  "By  calling  the  principle  not  natural,"  says  Green, 
"we  mean  that  it  is  neither  included  among  the  phenomena  which  through  its 
presence  to  them  form  a  nature,  nor  consists  in  their  series,  nor  is  itself  determined 
by  any  of  the  relations  which  it  constitutes  among  them."  Prolegomena,  sec.  54. 

»I.   121. 

« I,  166. 

*  III,  cxxxiii. 


56  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

monster  as  some  have  imagined.  In  order  to  understand  what 
Green  had  in  mind  we  cannot  insist  too  often  that  it  is  not  the 
psychological  self  with  which  we  have  to  do.  This  is  of  primary 
importance  since  Green's  critics  persistently  fall  into  the  error 
of  treating  him  as  a  psychologist  rather  than  as  a  metaphysician. 
He  does  not  undertake  to  defend  the  existence  of  the  eternal 
self  by  means  of  psychological  introspection  or  by  appeal  to  any 
data  of  consciousness  whatever.  His  interest  is  to  show  that  an 
eternal  consciousness  as  the  subject  of  knowledge  is  implied  in 
the  existence  of  objects.  The  facts  of  consciousness  exist  in  time 
just  as  much  for  Green  as  they  do  for  the  psychologist.  As 
events,  the  events  of  consciousness  transpire  just  as  really  for 
Green's  theory  as  they  do  for  common-sense.  His  contention 
is  simply  and  solely  that  the  meaning  of  time,  that  is,  the  con- 
sciousness of  time,  is  not  an  event. 

A  representative  criticism  of  Green  which  illustrates  this 
psychological  bias  is  to  be  found  in  Professor  A.  E.  Taylor's 
The  Problem  of  Conduct.  The  burden  of  Taylor's  disagreement 
with  Green  is  that  ethics  is  not  dependent  on  metaphysics  as 
Green  taught.  Inasmuch  as  this  question  is  not  germane  to  our 
present  purpose,  we  pass  at  once  to  the  incidental  criticism  of 
Green's  conception  of  the  self.  In  opposition  to  Green,  Taylor 
makes  what  he  himself  calls  two  "rather  sweeping  assertions.'' 
They  are:  "(i)  There  is  no  such  thing  as  the  Eternal  Self,  in 
Green's  sense  of  the  term;  (2)  if  there  were  such  a  thing  as  the 
Eternal  Self,  it  would  be  of  no  value  for  the  purposes  of  the 
student  of  Ethics."1  Although  both  of  the  statements  are  indeed 
4 rather  sweeping,'  if  we  were  to  emphasize  the  conspicuous  word 
thing,  we  should  have  assertions  with  which  Green  himself  would 
heartily  agree.  That  this  suggestion  is  not  a  mere  cavil  will 
appear  as  we  proceed  to  a  discussion  of  Mr.  Taylor's  strictures. 

"What  Green  intended  to  prove,"  he  writes,  "was,  of  course, 
that  the  individual  consciousness  of  each  of  us,  on  one  side  at 
least,  is  something  which  is  not  a  result  of  'natural  forces,' 
has  not  had  a  beginning  in  time  nor  in  history,  and  consequently 
cannot  be  adequately  described  by  the  methods  of  'natural'  or 

1  The  Problem  of  Conduct  (1901),  p.  65. 


THE  INDIVIDUALITY  OF   THE  SUBJECT.  57 

'empirical*  science."  So  far,  this  passage  gives  an  accurate 
statement  of  Green's  purpose,  but  it  is  immediately  followed  by 
an  interpretation  much  less  satisfactory.  Taylor  seems  to  agree 
with  Green  that  ethics  cannot  be  based  on  '  physical '  facts,  but 
asks,  "why  may  we  not,  .  .  .  base  our  ethics  in  the  main  on 
the  observed  facts1  of  specifically  human  life?"2  Simply,  we  must 
reply,  because  they  are  still  observed  facts,  phenomena,  which, 
according  to  Green,  presuppose  the  ethical  consciousness  which 
is  in  question.  The  critic  has  lapsed  into  the  old  fallacy  of  treat- 
ing a  metaphysical  principle  as  a  psychological  phenomenon.  It 
is  a  mistake  to  suppose  that  Green  objected  only  to  reducing 
consciousness  to  a  series  of  'physical'  as  opposed  to  'psychical' 
facts.  The  empirical  sciences,  for  him,  are  those  sciences  which 
deal  with  the  world  of  objects  by  means  of  the  generally  recognized 
categories  of  science,  psychology  being  included  among  them.3 

Professor  Taylor  sums  up  Green's  argument  in  the  following 
language:  "Subject  and  object  are  relative  terms  which  mutually 
imply  one  another,  and  cannot  exist  independently  of  each  other; 
matter  and  motion  and  the  physical  world  are  objects,  ergo 
matter  is  not  subject,  and  conversely  the  subject  which  knows, 
desires,  etc.,  is  not  matter.  From  this  result,  which  we  have 
no  desire  to  impugn,  he  goes  straight  to  the  further  conclusion 
that  each  and  every  self  or  subject,  not  being  a  secondary  product 
of  physical  forces,  cannot  have  come  into  being,  and  cannot  have 
a  natural  history."4  Now,  inasmuch  as  Green  includes  the 
'psychical'  (meaning  thereby  the  phenomena  of  consciousness) 
along  with  the  'physical'  world  as  an  object  of  knowledge,  we 
must  insert  the  word  'psychical'  into  Mr.  Taylor's  second  propo- 
sition so  that  it  will  read:  'matter  and  motion  and  the  physical 
and  psychical  worlds  are  objects.'  Having  done  this,  the  final 
conclusion,  in  the  passage  quoted,  loses  its  apparent  character 
of  a  non  sequitur  and  becomes  the  only  possible  conclusion  to  be 
drawn.  The  implication  of  Professor  Taylor's  language  is  that 
Green  did  not  take  due  account  of  the  possibility  of  the  self 

1  My  italics. 

1  The  Problem  of  Conduct,  p.  66. 

1  Cf.  Bosanquet,  Proceedings  of  the  Aristotelian  Society  (1901-02),  p.  36  ff. 

4  The  Problem  of  Conduct,  pp.  68  and  69.     My  italics. 


58  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

being  a  product  of  psychical  forces,  whereas  Green  actually 
excludes  such  a  possibility  along  with  his  denial  that  conscious- 
ness arises  out  of  physical  events.  It  is  events,  as  such,  which 
cannot  account  for  the  consciousness  of  them.  Whether  we 
choose  to  call  those  events  physical  or  psychical  is  of  no  sig- 
nificance. 

"What  evidence,  then,"  continues  the  critic,  "does  Green 
supply  that  might  lead  us  to  affirm  the  underived  character  not 
merely  of  consciousness,  but  of  the  'self?  As  far  as  I  compre- 
hend his  reasonings,  all  the  evidence  for  this  important  transition 
is  offered  by  the  consideration  that  a  series  of  related  events  can- 
not possibly  become  aware  of  itself  as  a  related  series."1  Again, 
the  reader  might  be  satisfied  with  this  interpretation,  did  the 
author  not  hasten  to  add  the  footnote:  "This  position  itself 
needs  more  qualification  than  Green  gives  it  before  it  can  be 
accepted  as  psychologically  true."  The  author  confesses  that 
he  is  unable,  by  introspection,  to  verify  Green's  contention. 
"But  of  course,"  he  writes,  "an  opponent  may  say  that  this  is 
due  to  defective  observation"*  This  seems  an  altogether  singular 
position  for  one  who  is  familiar  with  Green's  convincing  argu- 
ments against  Hume's  attempt  to  find  such  a  'self  by  'looking 
within  his  own  mind.'  This  confusion  between  the  self  as  a 
principle  of  unity  in  difference  and  the  self  as  psychological  and 
objective  is  at  the  root  of  this  and  of  much  misunderstanding  of 
Green.  The  only  reply  to  be  made  is  the  one  made  by  D.  G. 
Ritchie  to  Bradley 's  characterization  of  the  'timeless  self  as  a 
"psychological  monster."3  The  timeless  self  does  not  claim  to 
be  a  psychological  self,  and  Green  protests  against  such  an  inter- 
pretation throughout  his  works.  The  timeless  self  is  not  the 
psychological  self  (which  is  by  hypothesis  in  time,  since  it  may 
be  observed);  but  rather  the  knowing  consciousness  logically 
implied  in  the  possibility  of  psychology.  Such  a  self  is  not 
discovered  by  observation  but  by  a  rational  disclosure  of  the 
v  nature  of  observation ;  it  is  not  a  fact  but  the  meaning  of  fact. 
The  next  step  in  Mr.  Taylor's  argument  is  that  relative 

1  The  Problem  of  Conduct,  p.  70. 

2  Loc.  cit.,  note  2.     My  italics. 

«  Philosophical  Review,  III,  28,  29.     Cf.  Bradley,  Appearance  and  Reality,  p.  113. 


THE  INDIVIDUALITY  OF  THE  SUBJECT.  59 

permanency  of  the  self  is  all  that  is  required  to  account  for 
unity  in  diversity.  "What  is  required,"  he  says,  "in  order  that 
the  successive  presentations  A,  B,  C  may  all  be  recognized  as 
experiences  of  the  one  soul  or  self  d,  is  not  that  d  itself  shall  stand 
in  some  mysterious  way  outside  the  time  series,  but  simply  that 
alongside  of  the  transition  A,  B,  C  there  shall  remain  elements 
in  the  experience  of  d  which  are  the  same  at  the  moment  when  C 
is  being  experienced  as  when  A  was  being  experienced."1  Here 
again  the  question  is  bound  to  arise — What  can  relative  perma- 
nency, or  'change  at  a  much  less  rapid  rate'  mean  without  the 
implicated  consciousness  for  which  such  relative  permanence  is  a 
fact?  No  point  can  be  carried  against  Green's  metaphysics 
by  an  appeal  to  psychological  facts.  They  may  be  real  and 
very  important  facts,  but  they  are  not  relevant  to  the  discussion. 
Our  attention  must  be  fixed  on  the  question,  'What  is  a  fact?', 
not  'What  are  the  facts?'  The  spiritual  principle  which 
Green  has  called  'consciousness'  is,  by  hypothesis,  the  meaning 
of  facts  and  events,  and  as  such,  it  is  not  a  fact  or  an  event.* 
Consciousness  is  a  principle  internal  to  events  themselves  by  virtue 
of  which  they  are  constituted.  Such  a  view  of  the  nature  of  con- 
sciousness no  more  destroys  the  reality  of  time  than  a  declaration 
of  the  non-spatial  character  of  knowledge  destroyed  the  reality 
of  space  in  the  former  argument.  It  does,  however,  destroy  the 
possibility  of  setting  up  time  as  an  independent  reality,  or  of 
making  time  serve  as  a  universal  category.  Mind  is  the  creator 
of  time,  not  its  creature.  In  whatever  sense  and  degree  con- 
sciousness knows  a  series  of  natural  events,  in  that  sense  and  to 
that  degree  it  is  not  a  member  of  the  natural  series. 

1  The  Problem  of  Conduct,  p.  72. 

2  From  this  it  follows  without  argument  that  the  subject  is  not  to  be  conceived 
as  that  which  existed  prior  to  the  beginning  of  events  (Prolegomena,  sec.  73),  or 
as  that  which  exists  as  an  unmoving  point  outside  of  the  series  of  events,  in  relation 
to  which  they  move.     Green's  use  of  the  expression  ' punctum  stans'  is  shown  by 
the  above  quotation  to  be  borrowed  from  Locke  in  an  attempt  to  meet  Locke  on 
his  own  ground.     It  is  not  native  to  Green's  thought.     Cf.  Bosanquet,  Proceedings 
of  the  Aristotelian  Society  (1901-02),  p.  39.     "The  first  thing  to  remember  seems 
to  me  to  be  that  it  [the  punctum  stans  argument]  does  not  at  all  stand  alone,  but 
that  the  main  foundation  of  Green's  argument  is  clearly  and  continually  expressed 
in  other  terms,  (e.  g..  Prolegomena,  sections  36  and  83)  referring  to  the  nature  of  a 
true  whole,  and  the  progressive  realization  of  such  a  whole  in  the  human  mind." 


60  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

Green  not  only  refuses  to  think  of  the  self  in  spatial  or  temporal 
terms,  but,  in  a  similar  manner,  he  argues  against  applying  the 
categories  of  cause  and  effect  to  the  self.  Cause  is  a  principle  of 
intelligibility  whereby  consciousness  knows  the  world  of  objects. 
It  applies  to  objects,  but  not  to  knowledge  of  objects.1  "A 
proposition,"  says  Green,  "which  asserts  divine  causation  for 
any  phenomenon  is  not  exactly  false,  but  turns  out  on  strict 
analysis  to  be  unmeaning."2  It  is  unmeaning  because  God, 
when  truly  conceived  as  the  spiritual  principle  in  the  world,  is 
in  no  sense  interpolated  as  the  supernatural  into  an  otherwise 
natural  series  of  events.  In  exactly  the  same  sense  our  conscious- 
ness does  not  cause  its  object  nor  does  the  object  cause  con- 
sciousness.3 Numerous  attempts  have  been  made  to  show  that 
consciousness  is  the  effect  of  the  interaction  of  organism  and 
environment.  All  such  attempts,  according  to  Green,  take 
certain  relations  between  objects,  "which  only  belong  to  them 
as  being  what  consciousness  has  made  them,  to  explain  the  fact 
of  there  being  the  consciousness  to  which  they  owe  their  existence. 
...  A  product  of  consciousness — or,  to  speak  more  precisely, 
a  certain  correlation  of  matter  and  organism  belonging  to  the 
'universe  which  arises  in  consciousness,'  or  to  that  objective 
world  to  the  existence  of  which  it  is  admitted  that  a  subject  is 
necessary — is  thus  employed  to  account  for  the  origin  of  con- 
sciousness."4 Such  a  procedure,  he  continues,  "can  only  remind 
us  of  Baron  Munchausen's  feat  in  swinging  himself  across  a 
.stream  by  the  sleeve  of  his  own  coat."5 

JBut  enough  has  now  been  said  of  Green's  treatment  of  the 
particular  categories  to  prepare  for  his  own  positive  conception 
of  consciousness.  We  have  seen  that  consciousness  is  not  an 
object  of  knowledge  in  any  ordinary  sense.  It  is  not  a  phe- 
nomenon in  any  sense  of  the  word.  It  is  not,  therefore,  related 
to  objects  as  objects  are  related  to  each  other.  The  categories 

1  Cf.  Prolegomena,  sections  16  and  17. 
«  III,  264. 

8 "  Intelligence,  experience,  knowledge,  are  no  more  a  result  of  nature  than 
nature  of  them."     Prolegomena,  sec.  36. 
4 1,  482. 
*  I,  482,  483- 


THE  INDIVIDUALITY  OF   THE  SUBJECT.  6 1 

of  the  empirical  sciences  do  not  apply  to  the  source  of  the  cate- 
gories. "In  vain,"  says  M.  Bergson  in  a  slightly  different  con- 
text but  in  the  same  spirit,  "we  force  the  living  into  this  or  that 
one  of  our  molds.  All  the  molds  crack.  They  are  too  narrow, 
above  all  too  rigid,  for  what  we  try  to  put  into  them."1  "The 
greatest  writer,"  says  Green,  "must  fall  into  confusions  when  he 
brings  under  the  conceptions  of  cause  and  substance  the  self- 
conscious  thought  which  is  their  source;  and  nothing  else  than 
this  is  involved  in  Locke's  avowed  enterprise  of  knowing  that 
which  renders  knowledge  possible  as  he  might  know  any  other 
object."2 

So  far,  however,  our  conception  of  consciousness  and  its  rela- 
tion to  its  object  is  negative.  'Of  what  value,'  it  may  be  asked, 
'is  the  proof  for  the  reality  of  a  mere  principle  which  causes 
nothing,  is  nowhere,  and  about  which  no  natural  history  can  be 
written?  Is  it  not  a  logical  abstraction  rather  than  real  exist- 
ence?' Green  raises  the  same  objection  and  answers  it  in  the 
following  language:  "To  the  rejoinder  that  implication  in  the 
conception  of  nature  does  not  prove  real  existence,  the  answer 
must  be  the  question,  What  meaning  has  real  existence,  the  anti- 
thesis of  illusion,  except  such  as  is  equivalent  to  this  concep- 
tion?"3 This  summary,  perhaps  almost  curt,  reply  to  his  critics 
should,  by  no  means,  lead  us  to  suppose  that  Green  was  fully 
content  to  stop  with  a  purely  negative  or  formal  characterization 
of  the  subject.  His  argument  up  to  this  point  has  been  a  means 
to  an  end.  Little  by  little  he  has  forced  his  reader  to  abandon 
the  common  habits  of  thinking  about  thought,  or  self-conscious- 
ness, as  if  it  were  an  object  of  knowledge,  and  has  brought  him 
face  to  face  with  the  subject  of  knowledge.  By  this  method  he 
has  cleared  the  ground  for  a  more  adequate  notion  of  the  self 
as  the  subject  related  to  the  object  through  the  unique,  creative 
function  of  knowledge — it  knows  the  object. 

The  subject,  so  understood,  although  it  can  never  be  con- 
ceived in  the  ordinary  terms,  is  not  left  as  a  vague,  mystic  ab- 

1  Creative  Evolution  (translated  by  Mitchell,  1911),  p.  x.     Cf.  Ill,  228-229. 

2  I,  109. 
»I,  129. 


62  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

straction  about  which  nothing  can  be  said.1  On  the  contrary, 
it  is  arrived  at  by  greater  and  greater  determination  through  a 
process  of  mediating  dialectic  in  which  the  mechanical  categories 
are  gradually  shown  to  be  inadequate  and  the  nature  of  indi- 
viduality correspondingly  revealed.  Reflection,  in  its  initial 
stages,  showed  that  objects  are  individualized  through  the  cate- 
gories. We  are  now  ready  to  understand  the  positive  nature  of 
the  subject,  as  the  true  individual,  the  true  case  of  unity  in 
variety.  Speaking  of  objects,  Green  writes:  "Abstract  the 
many  relations  from  the  one  thing,  and  there  is  nothing.  They, 
being  many,  determine  or  constitute  its  definite  unity.  It  is 
not  the  case  that  it  first  exists  in  its  unity,  and  then  is  brought 
into  various  relations.  Without  the  relations  it  would  not  exist 
at  all.  In  like  manner  the  one  relation  is  a  unity  of  the  many 
things.  They,  in  their  manifold  being,  make  the  one  relation. 
If  these  relations  really  exist,  there  is  a  real  unity  of  the  manifold, 
a  real  multiplicity  of  that  which  is  one.  But  a  plurality  of  things 
cannot  of  themselves  unite  in  one  relation,  nor  can  a  single  thing 
of  itself  bring  itself  into  a  multitude  of  relations.  It  is  true,  as 
we  have  said,  that  the  single  things  are  nothing  except  as  deter- 
mined by  relations  which  are  the  negation  of  their  singleness,  but 
they  do  not  therefore  cease  to  be  single  things.  Their  common 
being  is  not  something  into  which  their  several  existences  disap- 
pear. On  the  contrary,  if  they  did  not  survive  in  their  single- 
ness, there  could  be  no  relation  between  them — nothing  but  a 
blank  featureless  identity.  There  must,  then,  be  something  other 
than  the  manifold  things  themselves,  which  combines  them 
without  effacing  their  severalty.  With  such  a  combining  agency 
we  are  familiar  as  our  intelligence."2 

Every  intelligent  experience  does  present  this  typical  unity, 
combining  the  manifold  things  without  effacing  their  severalty. 
The  one  category,  therefore,  which  seems  appropriate  to  con- 
sciousness is  individuality.  The  same  individuality  which  we 
discovered  as  the  essential  nature  of  judgment,  the  simplest  form 

1  On   this   point   Green   is   diametrically   opposed   to   Bergson.     Contrast   the 
formula  of  Spinoza — determinatio  negatio  est.     Epist.  L. 

2  Prolegomena,  sections  28  and  29.     See  also  section  10  and  Nettleship,  Memoir, 
III,  Ixxvi. 


THE  INDIVIDUALITY  OF   THE  SUBJECT.  63 

of  knowledge,  also  characterizes  knowledge  in  all  its  com- 
plexity as  we  find  it  in  the  experience  of  a  long  life.  Indeed,  the 
whole  of  knowledge  is  but  an  expansion  of  the  judgment.  In 
judgment  we  have  a  key  to  the  nature  of  consciousness  and  also 
to  its  relation  to  the  object.  As  the  terms  of  the  judgment  do  not 
exist  independently,  but  only  in  and  through  the  judgment; 
so  the  objects  of  consciousness  do  not  exist  independently,  but 
only  in  and  through  consciousness. 

By  the  term  'consciousness'  we  here  refer  to  the  principle  in 
man  of  which  no  natural  history  can  be  given,  viz.,  his  capacity 
or  function  of  holding  objects  together  in  knowing  them  without 
effacing  their  severalty.  The  objects,  as  we  pointed  out  above, 
exist  only  for  consciousness  and  in  that  sense  consciousness  may 
be  said  to  create  them.  This  view  of  Green's,  however,  is  to  be 
sharply  distinguished  from  that  of  Kant.1  For  Kant,  the  under- 
standing makes  nature  by  forming  that  which  is  given  as  the 
matter  of  experience.  For  Green,  in  whatever  sense  the  under- 
standing creates  the  form,  it  also  creates  the  matter  of  experience. 
At  this  point  Green  leans  more  heavily  on  Aristotle  than  on 
Kant.  Form  and  matter  are  not  to  be  separated.  We  are  not 
free  to  speak  of  the  understanding  as  a  kind  of  artisan  who  works 
up  the  material  already  at  hand,  for  the  material  with  which  the 
artisan  works  is  already  formed.  The  understanding  makes 
nature  in  making  nature  possible,  but  this  function  is  not  de- 
pendent upon  having  at  hand  a  primeval  clay  out  of  which  to 
mold  its  forms.  To  be  is  to  be  formed,  to  be  related,  or,  in  the 
language  of  Greek  philosophy,  the  object  of  sense  does  not  exist; 
to  be  is  to  be  an  "object  of  knowledge."  Kant's  idea  is  that 
without  the  understanding  there  would  be  a  disordered  world  of 
things  by  themselves;  Green's  idea  is  that  without  the  under- 
standing there  would  be  no  world  at  all. 

"Everything  is  obscure  in  the  idea  of  creation,"  says  Bergson, 
"if  we  think  of  things  which  are  created  and  a  thing  which 
creates."1  When  we  say  that  consciousness  creates  its  object 
we  are  prone  to  form  an  image  of  consciousness  working  upon 

1  Prolegomena,  sections  1 1  ff . 

2  Creative  Evolution,  p.  248. 


64  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

something — engaged,  as  it  were,  in  its  manufacture.  But  this 
imagery  is  all  wrong.  The  creation  of  which  Green  speaks 
must  be  thought  of  in  a  very  different  way.  The  process  of 
creating  the  object  has  already  been  described  as  a  process  of 
determination,  leading  from  an  abstract,  relatively  unformed 
thing  to  the  highly  developed  concrete  individual  thing.  In  this 
sense  creation  is  internal  to  the  object.  The  object,  in  truth, 
develops  itself;  since  the  relations  of  its  individuality  are  not 
imposed  from  without,  but,  developing  from  within,  expose  or 
bring  out  the  true  nature  of  the  object. 

At  other  times  Green  speaks  of  the  relation  of  consciousness 
to  the  object  as  that  of  parent  to  child.  Consciousness  can  find 
its  own  life  reproduced  in  its  object.  It  knows,  and,  inasmuch 
as  objectivity  exists  in  and  through  the  function  of  knowledge, 
consciousness  may  be  said  to  be  the  father  of  the  world.  "But 
though  the  world  of  nature  is,  in  this  sense,  a  world  of  man's 
own  creation,  it  is  so  in  a  different  way  from  the  world  of  art 
and  of  philosophy.  Thought  is  indeed  its  parent,  but  thought 
in  its  primary  stage  fails  to  recognize  it  as  its  own,  fails  to  trans- 
fer to  it  its  own  attributes  of  universality,  and  identity  in 
difference.  It  sees  outward  objects  merely  in  their  diversity 
and  isolation.  It  seeks  to  penetrate  nature  by  endless  dichotomy, 
glorying  in  that  dissection  of  unity  which  is  the  abdication  of 
its  own  prerogative."1 

But  whatever  metaphor  Green  uses,  the  essential  character 
of  the  self  as  a  true  unity  in  plurality  and  plurality  in  unity 
is  what  he  is  most  concerned  to  show.  Although  the  ordinary 
terms  appropriate  to  the  object  of  knowledge  do  not  apply  to 
the  subject  of  knowledge,  the  self,  or  subject,  is,  nevertheless, 
like  the  object  in  that  it  unites  universality  and  particularity  in 
individuality.2  Along  with  the  similarity,  however,  there  is  this 
difference.  The  individuality  of  the  object  is  not  for  itself,  but 
only  for  the  subject  who  individualizes  it  in  knowing  it,  while 
the  subject  is  an  individual  for  itself.  The  subject,  by  this 
self-returning  activity,  does  actually  know  itself,  not,  to  be  sure, 

1  III,  21-22.     Cf.  Prolegomena,  sections  10,  n  ff. 

JC/.  Seth,  Man's  Place  in  the  Cosmos  (1897),  pp.  163-164.  "The  thing  and 
its  qualities  is  a  mere  analogue  of  the  self  as  a  many  in  one." 


THE  INDIVIDUALITY  OF  THE  SUBJECT.  65 

under  the  forms  of  space,  time,  causality,  and  the  like,  but  as  a 
unity  in  variety.  It  knows  itself  not  as  its  own  object,  but  as  the 
necessary  correlate  of  the  fact  that  it  has  an  object.  It  is  driven 
home  to  itself  from  its  contact  with  objectivity,  and  then  for  the 
first  time  knows  itself  as  that  above  all  which  made  its  first 
experience  possible.  It  sees  itself  not  as  an  object,  but  as  a 
creative  individual  subject.  This  view  is,  of  course,  by  no 
means  original  with  Green.  Hegel  has  made  such  language 
famous  when  describing  the  subject.1  He  defines  individuality 
as  "the  reflection-into-self  of  the  specific  characters  of  uni- 
versality and  particularity."2  In  Green's  language  we  call  the 
subject  a  spiritual  principle  because  "we  are  warranted  in 
thinking  of  it  as  a  self -distinguishing  consciousness."3  "There 
is  nothing  'fur  sich  bestehend'  but  thought  itself."4 

Green's  critical  work,  says  Professor  Andrew  Seth  Pringle- 
Pattison,  has  a  "victorious"  and  "conclusive"  character,  "but 
as  regards  the  nature  of  the  Self  or  Spiritual  Principle  which  is, 
in  his  hands,  the  instrument  of  victory,  the  candid  reader  of 
Green  is  forced  to  admit  that  almost  everything  is  left  vague."5 
It  may  readily  be  admitted  that  there  is  a  kind  of  vagueness 
about  Green's  account,  as  there  must  be  about  any  account,  of  a 
principle  which  is  shown  to  be  beyond  the  usual  methods  of 
thought.  The  epitome  of  Green's  attempt  to  define  the  self 
is  revealed  in  the  question:  "What  is  that  which  retains  a 
plurality  in  its  plurality,  and  yet  unifies  it  through  relation,  but 
consciousness?  "8  It  is  that  unity  in  which  diversity  is  immanent ; 
it  is  the  true  harmony  of  the  universal  and  the  particular,  i.  e., 
the  individual.  Whatever  vagueness  there  is  in  such  an  account 
of  consciousness  can  be  avoided  only  by  a  return  to  the  plane  of 
mechanism,  where,  waiving  all  ultimate  questions,  we  abandon 
the  hope  of  metaphysic.  But  if  we  would  inquire  into  the  nature 
of  the  subject  we  must  use  language  applicable  to  its  unique 

1  "The  idea  is  truth  in  itself  and  for  itself."     Logic  (Wallace),  section  213. 

1  Ibid,,  section  163. 

1  Prolegomena,  section  54. 

4  II,  ii,  note  i.     Cf.  II,  211. 

5  Hegelianism  and  Personality  (1887),  p.  4. 
•II,  16. 


66  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

character.  Leaving  the  explanation  of  mechanism,  we  must  go 
on  to  a  conception  of  consciousness  as  in  some  sense  the  source 
of  the  mechanical  relations.  To  him  who  can  believe  in  the 
reality  of  those  things  only  which  his  eyes  have  seen  and  his 
hands  have  handled,  Green's  talk  of  'spiritual  principles'  will 
continue  to  be  enigmatical.  To  such  a  one,  consciousness  must 
be  put  some  place,  or  set  in  time,  before  it  can  claim  reality;  to 
say  that  consciousness  is  an  individual,  or  a  unity  in  plurality 
or  a  principle,  is,  so  he  thinks,  to  'multiply  words  without 
knowledge.'  But  Green  offers  no  concessions  to  such  perverse 
scepticism.  Like  a  teacher  of  old,  when  men  say  of  consciousness, 
'Lo,  here,  or  Lo,  there,'  Green  warns  us  to  believe  them  not; 
if  we  would  find  consciousness  we  must  seek  it  in  the  way  of 
the  spirit.1 

1  Cf.  Mark,  13,  21. 


CHAPTER   V. 

GOD:   THE   COMPLETE   INDIVIDUAL. 

OUR  theory  of  consciousness  is  not  complete  until  we  have 
seen  not  only  what  consciousness  w,  but  what  it  is  to  be.  As 
objects  have  been  found  to  exhibit  different  degrees  of  concrete- 
ness  or  individuality,  so  there  are  degrees  of  individuality  in  the 
subject.  Although  the  simplest  recognition  of  matters  of  fact 
is  infinitely  removed  from  bare  particularity,  consciousness,  in 
its  early  stages,  is  relatively  nebulous  and  undetermined.  But 
as  the  object  of  knowledge  points  beyond  itself  to  a  complete 
system  of  nature,  so  the  finite  subject  finds  its  significance  by 
reference  to  a  total  situation  beyond  its  limitations.  We  have 
seen  that  the  object  becomes  more  and  more  complete  through 
successive  stages  of  definition ;  we  have  yet  to  trace  the  course  of 
the  finite  subject  through  a  similar  development.  The  progress 
in  each  case  is  toward  an  ideal  completion  of  individuality,  but 
there  is  this  fundamental  difference:  The  ideal  system  of  nature 
in  which  the  object  finds  its  complete  definition  exists  not  for 
the  actual  object  of  nature,  but  for  man  who  conceives  such  a 
system;  whereas,  the  ideally  complete  subject  exists  for  the 
actual  subject  as  his  own  self-conscious  ideal. 

The  individuality  which  I  discover  in  my  own  experience  is, 
after  all,  but  a  fragment.  I  am  limited  on  all  sides.  Not  only 
do  I  often  miss  the  truth,  but  I  always  fall  short  of  it;  and  yet  I 
am  not  limited  by  an  absolute  boundary  as  an  animal  is  con- 
fined in  a  cage.  The  limitation  of  human  knowledge,  which  no 
one  disputes  and  which  requires  no  proof,  is  the  limitation  inher- 
ent in  the  nature  of  knowledge.  Knowledge,  as  Green  has  so 
frequently  suggested,  has  to  do  with  a  situation  in  which  there 
is  a  certain  disparity  between  that  which  is  and  that  which  is 
not  yet.  The  guiding  thread  in  the  study  of  an  object  is  the 
ideal  of  a  complete  account  of  the  object  in  its  total  relation. 
It  is  the  nature  of  an  ideal  to  be  beyond  the  present  grasp,  and 

67 


68  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

yet  the  ideal,  as  a  functional  part  of  experience,  is  equally  present 
in  experience  with  that  which  is  already  grasped.  There  is  a 
sense,  therefore,  in  which  knowledge  sets  its  own  limits.  It  sets 
a  goal ;  approximates  it,  only  to  set  another,  and  so  on  endlessly. 
Thus,  although  our  knowledge  is  certainly  finite,  the  limits  are 
not  fixed  or  imposed  from  without,  but  are  incidental  to  the 
internal  development  of  knowledge  and  are  eternally  being  over- 
come. The  finite  mind,  in  knowing,  exhibits  itself  as  potentially 
infinite  through  this  very  process  of  setting  up  a  limit  and  then 
of  passing  beyond  its  own  limit.  Our  knowledge  is  never  quite 
complete,  but  always  finds  its  completion  in  a  future  judgment 
referring  to  that  which  lies  beyond  the  present  insight,  or,  in 
other  words,  to  reality  as  a  whole.  No  philosophy  can  ignore 
this  forward-pointing  characteristic  of  knowledge;  since  reality 
will  never  be  adequately  expressed  in  terms  of  finitude,  and  since 
what  lies  beyond  our  present  grasp  is,  nevertheless,  a  very 
important  aspect  of  the  world  and  must  be  reckoned  with.  In 
what  sense  it  is  real  and  what  relation  it  sustains  with  finite 
experience  constitutes  a  fundamental  problem  for  all  types  of 
metaphysical  theory.  Green  faces  this  problem  with  confidence, 
although  with  great  caution. 

It  is  first  necessary  to  remember  that  all  predication  is  based 
upon  an  assumption  that  there  is  a  nature  of  things  or  a  basal 
reality  by  reference  to  which  all  judgments  get  their  meaning, 
and  through  which  truth  is  distinguished  from  falsehood.  What 
the  reality  beyond  the  present  is,  is  not  now  in  question.  "The 
complete  determination  of  an  event,"  writes  Green,  "it  may  be 
impossible  for  our  intelligence  to  arrive  at.  There  may  always 
remain  unascertained  conditions  which  may  render  the  relation 
between  an  appearance  and  such  conditions  of  it  as  we  know, 
liable  to  change.  But  that  there  is  an  unalterable  order  of  rela- 
tions, ...  is  the  presupposition  of  all  our  enquiry  into  the 
real  nature  of  appearances."1 

We  are  justified  in  assuming  the  existence  of  such  an  objective 
totality2  by  reference  to  which  our  knowledge  acquires  validity 

1  Prolegomena,  sec.  26.     See  also  sec.  70. 

2  Mr.  A.  J.  Balfour  doubts  this  statement.     Cf.  Mind,  IX,  83. 


GOD:    THE   COMPLETE  INDIVIDUAL.  69 

because  the  scepticism  which  would  deny  its  existence  destroys 
itself  in  the  same  breath  by  assuming  some  such  reality  as  the 
basis  for  its  denial.  Any  conclusion  based  on  the  assumption 
that  there  is  such  a  dependable  system  of  relations  will  not, 
therefore,  be  weakened  by  the  suggestion  that  "the  validity  of 
our  conclusion,  upon  our  own  showing,  depends  upon  there  really 
being  such  an  order  of  nature  as  our  quest  of  knowledge  supposes 
there  to  be,  which  remains  unproven."  For,  Green  continues, 
"as  the  sceptic  in  order  to  give  his  language  a  meaning,  must 
necessarily  make  the  same  supposition — as  he  can  give  no 
meaning  to  reality  but  the  one  explained — his  suggestion  that 
there  really  may  not  be  such  an  order  of  nature  is  one  that  con- 
veys nothing  at  all."1 

Inasmuch  as  all  thought  proceeds  on  the  assumption  of  the 
verifiability  of  its  claims,  those  who  would  think  are  compelled 
to  assume  also  the  reality  of  a  total  objective  situation  as  a  basis 
for  such  a  verification.  To  deny  the  existence  of  such  a  universe 
is  to  affirm  it.  It  is  also  necessary  to  believe  that  the  process 
of  verification  of  tomorrow  will  be  similar  to  the  one  of  today. 
No  body  of  knowledge  could  exist  unless  nature  is  in  some  sense 
uniform  and  continuous.  On  these  considerations,  Green  rests 
his  conclusion  that  there  must  be  some  kind  of  an  objective 
criterion  of  judgment,  a  reality  which  gives  meaning  to  the  claim 
of  validity. 

This  reality,  however,  to  which  our  particular  judgments  are 
referred  may  be  conceived  in  at  least  two  very  different  ways. 
On  the  one  hand,  it  may  be  conceived  as  a  fixed  reality  outside 
of  thought,  to  which  our  ideas  correspond  more  or  less  accurately. 
Green  unconditionally  rejected  this  view.2  Our  ideas  are  in  no 
sense  copies  of  an  alien  reality;  for  a  moment's  reflection  shows 
that  ideas  are  included  within  reality.  '  The  work  of  the  mind  is 
real,'  he  tells  us.  If  truth  is  to  be  defined  as  'the  agreement 
of  thought  with  its  object,'  the  definition  must  be  reinterpreted. 
It  can  no  longer  take  shelter  behind  a  naive  assumption  that 
thought  may  somehow  be  superimposed  upon  its  object  and  found 

1  Prolegomena,  sec.  26. 
*  Cf.  Chapter  II. 


70  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

to  match  point  by  point.  Another  serious  objection  to  this  view 
is  that  reality  is  looked  upon  as  a  fixed  quantum  which  admits  of 
no  essential  change.  Everything  is  there,  once  for  all,  in  a 
static,  substantial  form.  The  dice  are  loaded  so  that  what- 
ever happens  must  take  place  along  preestablished  lines:  there 
is  no  room  for  actual  change  or  freedom. 

On  the  other  hand,  reality  may  be  looked  upon  as  a  total 
concatenation,  coherent  as  human  experience  is  coherent,  but 
in  its  totality  beyond  the  grasp  of  the  finite  mind.  According 
to  such  a  theory,  truth  may  be  said  to  depend  upon  the  degree  of 
individuality  which  any  experience  has  attained,  i.  e.,  upon  the 
degree  to  which  the  experience  has  transcended  its  fragmentary 
character  and  has  become  a  systematization  of  otherwise  abstract 
particulars.  This  is  Green's  conception  of  the  nature  of  reality 
and  truth.  "Coherence  .  .  .  ,"  he  writes,  "is  only  predicable 
of  a  system  of  relations,  not  felt  but  conceived ;  while  incoherence 
arises  from  the  attempt  of  an  imperfect  intelligence  to  think  an 
object  under  relations  which  cannot  ultimately  be  held  together 
in  thought."1  This  theory  maintains  that  the  reality  which  lies 
beyond  our  present  apprehension  is  of  a  piece  with  the  reality 
which  I  know.  All  possible  experience  must  somehow  be  uni- 
form with  that  already  attained.  The  uniformity  need  not, 
however,  be  repetition;  indeed  it  is  never  repetition,  but  there 
must  be  a  certain  consistency  of  relations  throughout  the  whole. 
The  relations  themselves  must  be  different,  btit  they  are  still  the 
same  in  being  relations.  The  relations  existing  for  the  individual 
knower  in  the  objective  order  are  a  guarantee  of  similar  relations 
in  the  universe  beyond  his  private  experience.  "The  uniformity 
of  nature,"  says  Green,  "does  not  mean  that  its  constituents  are 
everywhere  the  same,  but  that  they  are  everywhere  related; 
not  that  'the  thing  which  has  been  is  that  which  shall  be,'  but 
that  whatever  occurs  is  determined  by  relation  to  all  that  has 
occurred,  and  contributes  to  determine  all  that  will  occur."2 
The  rational  character  of  my  world  would  be  denied  by  a  proof 
of  the  irrationality  of  the  universe.  Unless  the  individuality 

1 1, 155. 

3  Prolegomena,  sec.  33.     Cf.  sec.  73. 


GOD:    THE   COMPLETE  INDIVIDUAL.  71 

discoverable  in  finite  experience  is  characteristic  of  the  world  as 
a  whole,  "we  have  asserted  the  unity  of  the  world  of  our  experi- 
ence only  to  transfer  that  world  to  a  larger  chaos."1 

The  first  type  of  philosophy  looks  upon  reality  as  a  permanent 
substance  more  or  less  disconnected  with  knowledge;  the  second 
type  looks  upon  it  as  a  permanent  system  of  relations,  organically 
and  vitally  connected  with  knowledge.  In  spite  of  the  external 
resemblance  of  the  two  accounts  of  objective  reality  there  is 
really  a  very  fundamental  difference.  In  both  cases  the  element 
of  permanence  is  strongly  emphasized,  but  in  the  first  case  the 
permanence  is  incompatable  with  change,  in  the  second,  change 
is  a  necessary  and  organic  factor  in  the  conception.  According 
to  the  first  notion,  reality  is  a  given  object  to  which  our  ideas 
may  be  said  to  correspond.  The  idea  is  always  external  to 
reality  and  has  nothing  to  do  with  its  constitution.  Change  can 
be  predicated,  not  of  reality,  but  only  of  our  thoughts  concerning 
it.  Reality,  therefore,  does  not  change;  change  is  illusion, 
resulting  from  the  false  or  incomplete  representative  character 
of  our  ideas.  The  second  conception  of  being  or  reality,  how- 
ever, is  very  different.  In  it  we  talk  no  more  of  substances,  but 
of  relations.  Now  a  world  of  relations  is  above  everything  else 
a  world  of  meanings,  or  of  judgments,  i.  e.,  an  intelligible  world. 
When  we  return  to  Green's  discussion  of  relations  we  recall 
that  relations  are  not  mere  connecting  links  between  substances, 
but  that  relations  constitute  the  objective  world  of  fact  to  its 
very  core.  There  is  nothing  left  over  when  relations  are  taken 
away.  The  'facts,'  therefore,  of  Green's  system  are  spiritual 
or  meaningful  through  and  through,  and,  what  is  still  more 
important,  the  facts  or  relations  are  '  capable  of  infinitely  numer- 
ous other  determinations  as  they  are  brought  into  new  relations.' 
With  these  familiar  doctrines  kept  well  in  mind  we  are  at  once 
able  to  see  the  tremendous  difference  between  a  reality  defined 
in  terms  of  things  and  substances  and  a  reality  defined  in  terms 
of  meanings  and  relations.  There  is  no  such  a  thing  in  Green's 
philosophy  as  a  fixed  or  static  meaning,  just  as  there  is  no  such 
a  thing  as  a  complete  and  axiomatic  judgment.  When,  therefore, 

1  Prolegomena,  sec.  39. 


72  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

reality  is  defined  as  a  permanent  system  of  relations  the  perma- 
nent has  no  reference  to  a  static  reality,  immobile  and  change- 
less, but  permanent  in  just  the  same  sense  that  any  truth  is 
permanent  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  is  'capable  of  infinitely 
numerous  other  determinations.' 

In  view  of  the  fact  that  the  problem  of  change  and  develop- 
ment in  Green's  philosophy  will  later  call  for  a  somewhat  more 
extended  treatment,  the  matter  may  be  allowed  to  rest  for  the 
present.  It  is  to  be  noticed,  however,  that  Green's  attempt  to 
define  the  nature  of  reality  as  a  whole  is  put  in  the  same  terms 
which  he  used  to  describe  the  nature  of  each  phase  of  experience 
with  which  he  has  dealt.  Firmly  convinced  that  finite  experi- 
ence is  a  systematic  or  relational  whole,  he  does  not  hesitate  to 
characterize  the  world  of  possible  experience  beyond  the  present 
grasp  of  a  finite  mind,  as  also  a  world  of  relations,  continuous  with 
the  cosmos  of  finite  experience;  not  necessarily  intelligible  under 
the  exact  forms  which  the  finite  mind  now  uses,  but  necessarily 
intelligible,  i.  e.,  necessarily  related  to  the  present  and  char- 
acterized internally  by  relations.  All  experiences,  actual  or 
possible — "the  experience  of  a  thousand  years  ago  and  the 
experience  of  today,  the  experience  which  I  have  here  and  that 
which  I  might  have  in  any  other  region  of  space," — must  some- 
how form  a  single  system.1 

Having  thus  satisfied  himself  that  there  is  an  objective  system 
of  relations,  Green  proceeds  to  draw  the  conclusion  that  such  a 
system  implies  a  spiritual  principle  as  the  complete  subject  of 
that  total  system  of  objects.  "The  inference  from  nature,"  he 
writes,  "to  a  being  neither  in  time  nor  contingent  but  self- 
dependent  and  eternal,  ...  is  valid  because  the  conception  of 
nature,  of  a  world  to  be  known,  already  implies  such  a  being."2 
It  will  be  observed  that  Green's  argument  for  the  existence  of 
this  self-dependent  being  is  identical  with  the  argument  by  which 
he  proved  the  spiritual  principle  in  knowledge.  In  neither  case 

1  Prolegomena,  sec.  32.  ^ 

2  I,  129.     See  also  Prolegomena,  sections  19  f.  and  69.     At  this  stage  in  the 
discussion  it  is  probably  unnecessary  to  remind  the  reader  that  the  implication  of 
which  Green  speaks  is  never  a  mere  verbal  or  associational  connection.     God  is 
implied  in  nature  just  as  subject  in  general  is  implied  in  objectivity.     C/.  Chap.  III. 


GOD:    THE   COMPLETE  INDIVIDUAL.  73 

is  the  appeal  made  to  an  immediate  or  intuitive  apprehension, 
but  the  spiritual  principle  is  said  to  be  implied  in  the  natural  or 
objective  order.  The  spiritual  is  discovered  in  the  natural.1 
He  has  no  hesitancy  in  arguing  from  a  permanent  system  of 
relations  to  the  existence  of  a  spiritual  principle,  which  he  con- 
sistently calls  God,  implied  in  those  relations.  "  That  God  is," 
he  says,  "it  [human  reason]  entitles  us  to  say  with  the  same 
certainty  as  that  the  world  is  or  that  we  ourselves  are.  What  he 
is,  it  does  not  indeed  enable  us  to  say  in  the  same  way  in  which 
we  make  propositions  about  matters  of  fact."2 

It  is  peculiarly  unsatisfying  to  stop  with  the  bare  assertion, 
or  proof,  of  God's  existence,  if  this  is  to  rest  as  the  mere  asser- 
tion of  the  undefined.  In  the  language  of  Edward  Caird: 
"There  is  a  fundamental  incoherence  in  a  view  which,  though 
treating  the  infinite  as  a  positive  reality,  and,  indeed,  as  the 
reality  that  underlies  all  other  realities,  yet  reduces  it  to  that  of 
which  nothing  can  be  said,  except  that  it  is."3  The  human  mind 
demands  more  than  this.  We  want  to  know  what  relations  we, 
as  finite  beings,  have  with  this  infinite  being,  God.  What 
difference  does  it  make  to  me  that  God  exists  if  I  must  remain 
forever  ignorant  of  his  nature  and  his  relation  to  us?  We  are 
less  concerned  today  with  the  proof  that  God  exists,  just  as  we 
are  less  concerned  with  the  proof  that  the  human  self  exists,  and 
more  concerned  with  the  character  of  God  and  the  self.  To 
prove  the  existence  of  anything  is  at  best  a  very  meagre  result 
except  in  so  far  as  it  leads  on  to  a  deeper  insight.  According  to 
Green's  own  theory  'everything  exists'  of  which  we  speak,  the 

1  It  may  also  be  noticed  that  Green's  proof  for  the  existence  of  the  spiritual 
principle  in  nature  is  not  the  cosmological  proof  for  the  existence  of  God.     The 
spiritual  principle  (God)  is  no  more  the  cause  of  the  objective  order  as  a  whole 
than  consciousness  is  the  cause  of  its  object.     In  each  case  the  two  are  distin- 
guishable but  inseparable  features  of  a  single  reality.     "We  contradict  ourselves," 
he  says,  "if  we  say  that  there  was  first  a  chaos  and  then  came  to  be  an  order;  for 
the  'first'  and  'then'  imply  already  an  order  of  time,  which  is  only  possible  through 
an  action  not  in  time."     (Prolegomena,  sec.  66.)     Cf.  Bergson,  Creative  Evolution, 
p.  220  ff.     Furthermore,  Green  is  not  giving  the  ontological  proof.     He  does  not 
argue  from  the  idea  of  a  spiritual  principle  to  its  existence;  but  from  the  existence 
of  nature  to  a  spiritual  principle  through  which  nature  is  possible. 

2  III,  268.     Cf.  also  Prolegomena,  sec.  51. 
1  The  Evolution  of  Religion,  Vol.  I,  p.  109. 


74  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

important  thing  being  to  show  how  it  exists  or  in  what  its  exist- 
ence consists.  Perhaps  Green  expended  a  disproportionate 
amount  of  energy  in  showing  that  God  is,  to  the  neglect  of  a 
constructive  attempt  to  tell  us  what  he  is,1  but  fortunately  he 
has  not  left  us  wholly  ignorant  of  his  conception  of  God's  nature. 

His  most  significant  attempt  to  tell  us  what  God  is  is  put  in 
the  form  of  an  analogy.  The  spiritual  principle  in  nature  is, 
he  says,  "analogous  to  that  of  our  understanding."  It  may,  at 
first  thought,  seem  rather  unsatisfactory  to  rest  such  a  far  reach- 
ing conception  on  an  analogy.  The  analogy,  however,  is  not  an 
ordinary  one,  and  is  not  offered  as  a  proof  of  God's  existence, 
nor  as  a  complete  expression  of  his  nature,  but  as  an  assistance 
to  the  mind  in  its  attempt  to  conceive  him.  Like  all  analogies, 
this  one  doubtless  has  its  limitations,  and  is  based  on  differences 
as  well  as  similarities.2  The  differences  between  God  and  man 
are  just  as  significant  for  Green's  theory  as  are  the  similarities. 
The  analogy  is  drawn  between  man,  the  as  yet  incomplete, 
partially  self-determined  individual,  and  God,  the  complete, 
wholly  self-determined  individual. 

God  is  like  man  in  being  the  subject  rather  than  an  object  of 
knowledge.  He  is  not  a  thing,  an  event,  a  cause;  by  searching 
he  cannot  be  found  out.  "You  cannot  know  him,"  writes 
Green,  "as  you  know  a  particular  fact  related  to  you,  but  neither 
can  you  so  know  yourself."3  Our  knowledge  of  both  man  and 
God  is  gained  by  inference;  the  one  by  reflection  on  the  nature 
of  knowledge;  the  other  by  reflection  on  the  universal  system  of 
relations  through  which  knowledge  is  possible.  Green's  attempts 
to  describe  God  as  a  spiritual  principle  implied  in  nature  are 
stated  in  terms  identical  with  those  which  he  used  in  describing 
the  spiritual  principle  in  man.  The  arguments  by  which  these 
conclusions  are  reached  are  also  exactly  alike  point  by  point. 
In  each  case,  the  subjective  principle  is  discovered  as  the  impli- 
cation of  an  objective  order.  It  is,  as  it  were,  hidden  from  us, 
buried  within  the  objective  order,  and  comes  to  light  only  after 

1  Cf.  Edw.  Caird's  criticism,  Mind,  O.  S.,  VIII,  560  ff.     Also  John  Watson, 
Philosophical  Review,  XVIII,  161. 

2  Cf.  Ill,  225. 
a III.  272. 


GOD:    THE   COMPLETE  INDIVIDUAL.  75 

the  labor  of  sober  reflection.  Green's  language  in  describing  the 
spiritual  principle  in  nature  will  clearly  reveal  the  sense  in  which 
God  is  like  man.  He  says:  " By  calling  the  principle  not  natural 
we  mean  that  it  is  neither  included  among  the  phenomena  which 
through  its  presence  to  them  form  a  nature,  nor  consists  in  their 
series,  nor  is  itself  determined  by  any  of  the  relations  which  it 
constitutes  among  them.  In  saying  more  than  this  of  it  we  must 
be  careful  not  to  fall  into  confusion.  We  are  most  safe  in  calling 
it  spiritual,  because,  for  reasons  given,  we  are  warranted  in 
thinking  of  it  as  a  self -distinguishing  consciousness."  It  is 
misleading,  he  continues,  to  call  it  supernatural;  "for  we  suggest 
a  relation  between  it  and  nature  of  a  kind  which  has  really  no 
place  except  within  nature,  as  a  relation  of  phenomenon  to 
phenomenon.  We  convey  the  notion  that  it  is  above  or  beyond 
or  before  nature,  that  it  is  a  cause  of  which  nature  is  the  effect, 
a  substance  of  which  the  changing  modes  constitute  nature; 
while  in  truth  all  the  relations  so  expressed  are  relations  which, 
indeed,  but  for  the  non-natural  self-conscious  subject  would  not 
exist,  but  which  are  not  predicable  of  it."1  And  he  sums  the 
whole  matter  up  by  declaring  that  "we  are  entitled  to  say, 
positively,  that  it  [i.  e.,  the  spiritual  principle  in  nature]  is  a 
self-distinguishing  consciousness;"  and,  "negatively,  that  the 
relations  by  which,  through  its  action,  phenomena  are  deter- 
mined are  .  .  .  not  relations  by  which  it  is  itself  determined."2 
So  far  Green  treats  God  as  "identical  in  principle"  with  the 
self-conscious  human  individual;  but  here  the  similarity  ceases 
and  difference  begins.  No  one  recognizes  more  fully  than  does 
Green  the  great  differences  between  God  and  man.  Man  is 
entangled  by  the  phenomenal  order  from  which  he  is  "evermore 
working  himself  free"  in  his  struggle  to  realize  the  divinity  within 
him  and  to  grasp  life's  meaning  in  its  entirety.  God,  on  the 
other  hand,  is  that  ideal  meaning  itself.  He  is,  therefore,  all 
that  it  is  possible  for  man  to  become.  But  this  conception  of 
God  as  the  completion  of  the  finite  individual  is  a  difficult  one 
to  express.  Green  resorts,  at  this  point,  to  another  figure  of 

1  Prolegomena,  sec.  54. 
1  Prolegomena,  sec.  52. 


76  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

speech.  We  can  know  what  this  spiritual  principle  is  only 
"  through  its  so  far  acting  in  us  as  to  enable  us,  however  partially 
and  interruptedly,  to  have  knowledge  of  a  world  or  an  intelligent 
experience."1  Elsewhere  he  tells  us  that  God  makes  the  animal 
organism  "the  vehicle"  of  his  "communication"  to  man,2  and 
that  "God  gradually  reproduces  himself  in  us."3 

The  meaning  of  all  these  figures  is  that  God  is  the  ideal  or 
possible  self.  Man,  though  the  true  type  of  individual,  at  least 
in  so  far  as  he  'partakes  of  self-consciousness,'  is,  nevertheless 
but  the  promise  of  a  complete  synthesis  of  life's  variety.  "There 
is  but  one  real  world,"  says  Green,  "the  intelligible,  which, 
however,  is  an  actuality,  of  which  to  us  sense  is  the  potentiality."4 
This  gap  between  the  potential  and  the  actual  is  what  gives  scope 
for  the  growth  of  knowledge,  which  is  but  another  name  for  the 
'process  of  actualization'  under  consideration.  But  Green 
believes  that  a  "process  of  actualization  presupposes  a  complete 
actuality  which  is  at  once  its  beginning  and  its  end."5  God  is 
the  ideal  completion  of  the  meaning  of  the  finite  self. 

In  this  conception  we  see  the  basis  for  Green's  statement  that 
we  can  know  what  God  is  only  "piecemeal"  and  never  adequately. 
It  is  the  nature  of  an  ideal  to  be  beyond  the  present  grasp,  and 
if  it  is  to  remain  an  ideal  it  must  remain  beyond  the  grasp.  There 
is  this  fundamental  difference,  however,  between  Green's  con- 
tention that  God  in  his  completeness  is  forever  unknown  to  the 
finite  mind  and  the  theory,  as  formulated  by  Spencer,  that  God 
is  the  unknowable.  There  is  a  sense  in  which  God  is  unknowable, 

1  Prolegomena,  sec.  51. 

2  Prolegomena,  sec.  67. 

3  Prolegomena,  sec.  71.     The  means  which  God  uses  of  communicating  himself 
to  man  are  the  gradual  means  of  a  rational  progress  in  understanding  the  world. 
The  revelation  is  no  miraculous  telling  of  special  secrets  as  the  result  of  divination 
or  mystery,  but  the  revelation  of  our  coming  to  know  the  reality  about  us.     Fore- 
most among  the  instruments  of  communication  Green  names  institutions.     He 
treats  an  institution  much  as  Hegel  does,  as  "an  elementary  effort  after  a  regu- 
lation of  life."     (Prolegomena  sec.  205.)     Social  and  political  institutions  are  the 
outward  expression  of  the  life  of  reason  in  which  each  rational  self-consciousness 
partakes  in  some  degree.     As  we  become  more  and  more  law  abiding  or  well 
regulated  in  life,  we  approach  nearer  and  nearer  to  a  complete  apprehension  of 
God's  nature.     It  is  thus  that  he  "communicates  himself  to  us." 

«  III.  84. 
6  III,  85. 


GOD:    THE   COMPLETE  INDIVIDUAL.  77 

says  Edward  Caird,  "but  to  say  that  we  cannot  know  God  to 
perfection,  is  only  to  say  that  we  cannot  know  everything;  while 
to  say  that  we  cannot  know  Him  at  all  is  to  say  that  we  can  know 
nothing.  We  cannot  know  God  to  perfection,  because  we  cannot 
know  the  world  or  ourselves  to  perfection ;  but  all  our  knowledge 
is  based  on  the  presence  of  these  three  inseparable  elements  of 
consciousness  within  us,  and  all  our  knowledge  is  therefore  a  part 
of  the  knowledge  of  God.  It  is  true  that,  just  because  he  is  the 
light  of  all  our  seeing,  he  can  never  be  completely  seen;  for  the 
return  we  make  on  the  ultimate  presupposition  of  our  being  can 
never  be  a  final  return."1  It  is  in  just  this  sense  that  Green 
holds  that  God  is  unknowable.  To  grasp  God  in  his  fullness 
would  be  to  have  achieved  an  ideal  once  for  all,  and,  therefore, 
to  have  destroyed  God  and  the  ideal. 

That  both  the  total  system  of  nature  and  the  subject  through 
which  such  a  system  is  possible  are  ideal,  i.  e.,  never  actually 
realized  in  human  experience,  is,  therefore,  no  reason  for  denying 
their  existence.  They  exist  as  the  ideal  of  a  self-conscious 
being.  Such  an  ideal  is  at  the  same  time  the  highest  reality 
because  it  is  bound  up  with  experience  at  every  point.  It  is  a 
characteristic  feature  of  experience,  indispensable  to  its  very 
existence.  "There  may  probably  at  first  seem  to  be  something 
offensive,"  says  Green,  "in  the  doctrine  that  the  'possible  self/ 
the  realization  of  which  is  the  source  of  all  action  that  can 
properly  be  called  moral  or  immoral,  is  God,  and  that  in  our 
identity  with  it  lies  the  true  unity  with  God.  Before  it  is  re- 
jected, however,  let  it  be  understood.  On  a  first  hearing  it  may 
seem  to  imply  that  God  does  not  actually  exist  at  all,  but  is  a 
mere  name  for  an  empty  ideal  of  what  each  of  us  would  like  to 
become.  This  is  a  misapprehension,  which  a  better  under- 
standing of  the  relation  between  actual  and  possible  will  remove."8 

It  requires  both  the  actual  and  the  possible  to  make  up  a 
self  conscious  experience.  Even  in  the  case  of  the  object,  indeed, 
as  we  noticed  in  Chapter  II,  its  totality  is  'not  there  all  at  once.' 
An  object  is  more  than  a  present,  limited  actuality;  it  is  a  poten- 

1  The  Evolution  of  Religion,  Vol.  I,  139-140. 

2  III,  224. 


78  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

tiality  of  the  whole  universe.  It  reaches  out  beyond  the  'this' 
and  the  'now'  to  find  its  final  self  in  the  completion  of  meaning 
to  which  it  is  determined  through  successive  judgments.  But 
if  it  is  necessary  to  give  an  account  of  the  object  partly  in  terms 
of  that  which  it  is  not  yet,  how  much  more  clearly  is  this  essen- 
tial in  the  case  of  the  subject.  The  ideal  object  exists  for  the 
conscious  subject,  but  the  subject  is  capable  of  setting  its  own 
ideal.  The  possible  object  and  the  possible  subject  are,  there- 
fore, real  in  the  only  truly  consistent  meaning  of  that  word.  To 
be  real  is  to  have  "qualities  and  relations  of  its  own."  If,  then, 
the  ideal  is  so  far  related  that  it  is  indispensable  to  the  simplest 
experience  of  objects,  by  what  right  do  we  suppose  that  it  is  not 
real?  The  statement  that  the  ideal  is  not  real,  acquires  its  force, 
and  its  danger,  from  an  equivocal  use  of  the  word  real.  At  one 
time  it  is  used  as  the  opposite  of  unreal,  and  at  another  as  a 
synonym  for  actual  as  opposed  to  possible.  The  first  use  has 
been  shown  above  to  be  absolutely  indefensible;1  the  second 
should  be  abandoned  because  it  is  easily  confused  with  the  first. 
If  we  mean  that  the  ideal  is  not  realized,  or  actualized,  in  finite 
experience  we  are  merely  explicating  the  meaning  of  the  word.  It 
is  not  only  not  achieved,  but  by  its  very  nature  it  will  never  be 
achieved. 

"To  say  then,"  says  Green,  "that  God  is  the  final  cause  of 
the  moral  life,  the  ideal  self  which  no  one,  as  a  moral  agent,  is, 
but  which  everyone,  as  such  an  agent,  is  however  blindly  seeking 
to  become,  is  not  to  make  him  unreal.  It  is,  however  (and  this 
may  seem  at  once  more  presumptuous  and  less  reasonable) ,  in  a 
certain  sense  to  identify  him  with  man;  and  that  not  with  an 
abstract  or  collective  humanity  but  with  the  individual  man."2 
This  highly  significant  quotation  indicates  a  very  important 
element  in  Green's  conception  of  God,  and  at  the  same  time 
more  fully  justifies  his  use  of  the  analogy  between  God  and  man. 
God  is  like  man  in  being  strictly  an  individual.  As  man  in  knowing 
combines  his  several  experiences  into  one  experience  without 
effacing  their  severalty,  so  God  is  the  unifying  principle  in  nature 
which  unites  but  at  the  same  time  differentiates  the  variety  of 

1  Pp.  26  f. 

2  III,   225. 


GOD:   THE   COMPLETE  INDIVIDUAL.  79 

nature.  In  the  same  sense  that  thought  creates  its  object,  God 
creates  the  system  of  objects,  i.  e.,  by  making  the  system  possible. 

All  idealistic  philosophies  have  been  frequently  charged  with 
neglecting  the  claims  of  life's  variety  in  favor  of  its  unity.  Green, 
however,  has,  in  reality,  forestalled  such  criticism  in  his  treat- 
ment of  the  individual  and  in  identifying  God  "with  the  indi- 
vidual man."  If  it  is  particularity,  abstract,  and  void  of  uni- 
versal relations,  which  the  objectors  are  desirous  of  saving  from 
Green's  conclusion,  it  is  altogether  too  late  to  protest  when  a 
discussion  of  God  is  reached.  The  mere  particular  not  only 
does  not  exist  in  the  infinite,  but  it  does  not  exist  in  the  finite. 
The  criticism  is,  therefore,  beside  the  mark;  for  the  mere  par- 
ticular exists  nowhere,  in  heaven  or  earth.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  critics  fear  that  the  individual  is  lost  in  the  infinite, 
we  have  but  to  recall  Green's  definition  of  the  real  as  that  which 
has  "qualities  and  relations  of  its  own"  to  be  convinced  that 
such  fears  are  without  foundation.  God  is  not  said  to  be  an 
ideal  universal  in  which  all  particularity  is  swallowed  up,  but  aa 
ideal  individual  in  which  particularity  and  universality  are 
united.1  How  can  any  individual  thing  which  has  "qualities 
and  relations  of  its  own"  become  less  real  or  in  danger  of  losing 
its  reality  altogether  by  the  extension  or  intension  of  those 
qualities  or  relations  through,  or  in,  an  ideally  complete  indi- 
viduality? 

Such  criticism  appears  to  tell  against  Green's  philosophy  for 
those  only  who  persist  in  thinking  of  definition  as  a  kind  of 
abstraction;  in  a  word,  for  those  who  still  remain  enslaved  by  the 
conceptions  of  formal  logic.  The  exposition  of  Green's  position 
on  this  point  has  already  been  given  in  Chapter  II.  There  it  was 
pointed  out  that  for  him  a  thing  does  not  become  less  but  more 
real  as  it  is  determined;  the  undetermined,  being  the  only  non- 
existent. Far  from  being  the  undetermined,  Green  holds  that 
God  is  the  highest  reality  and,  therefore,  the  most,  or  even  the 
completely  determined  being.  It  is  the  great  virtue  of  the 
philosophy  of  individuality  that  it  is  peculiarly  capable  of  re- 
taining the  many  and  the  one  in  their  truth ;  for  it  never  separates 

1  See  Green's  discussion  of  Berkeley's  conception  of  God  as  a^tya  $u>ov.     1, 157  ff  • 


So  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

them.  As  it  does  not  begin  its  speculation  with  the  abstract 
particular,  so  it  never  ends  with  the  abstract  universal.  Some 
kind  of  a  unity  in  variety  is  the  only  solution  which  can  satisfy 
the  two  fundamental  demands  of  thought;  but  if  the  initial 
separation  is  once  made  between  the  particular  and  the  uni- 
versal, there  can  be  no  ultimately  satisfactory  synthesis.  For 
through  the  procedure  imposed  by  the  method  which  has  been 
adopted,  thought  is  distorted  and  falsified,  and  reality  is  alienated 
at  the  very  threshold  of  speculation.  The  sane  and  fundamental 
demand  for  a  genuine  rationalization  of  reality  is  made  impossible 
of  satisfaction  by  an  arbitrary  and  abstract  procedure  of  thought. 
The  most  hopeful  way,  therefore,  is  found  in  the  way  of  indi- 
viduality which  Green  has  chosen. 

"Logically,"  says  Dewey,  "all  ultimates  are  alike;  the  differ- 
ence between  the  Unconscious  of  von  Hartmann,  the  Unknowable 
of  Spencer,  the  Will  of  Schopenhauer,  and  the  Thought  or  Self- 
consciousness  of  some  of  the  Neo-Hegelians  is  not  an  intellectually 
definable  difference."1  But  surely  this  is  a  most  surprising 
statement.  It  is  of  course  possible  to  use  the  term  Thought  or 
Self -consciousness  without  realizing  what  this  principle  involves; 
but  as  used  by  Green  the  term  'Self-consciousness'  is  radically 
different  from  the  other  ultimates  with  which  it  is  here  so 
strangely  classed.  Indeed,  there  is  all  the  difference  which 
obtains  between  substance  and  subject  or  between  mechanism 
^.nd  teleology.2  If  the  ultimate  is  defined  or  conceived  in  terms 
<of  the  abstract  or  merely  logical  universal,  we  have  a  very  different 
•sort  of  ultimate  from  one  conceived  as  an  individual.  The  one 
ds  the  absolutely  undetermined  and  indeterminable,  and  there- 
fore, according  to  Green,  the  unreal ;  the  other  is  the  completely 
determined  and  ultimate  reality.  The  one  is  the  summum  genus 
of  the  formal  logicians;  the  other,  unity  in  variety  typified  in 
the  concrete  judgment.  One  depends  on  subsumption  under 
classes;  the  other  on  articulation  by  relation.  The  one  tends  to 

jl  John  Dewey,  Philosophical  Review,  XIX,  p.  188. 

'2  I  do  not  wish  to  raise  the  question  of  the  interpretation  of  the  several  ulti- 
toates  mentioned,  but  merely  to  deny  that  'all  ultimates  are  alike,'  and  to  suggest 
the  essential  difference  between  Green's  'Self-consciousness'  which  is  individual 
and  other  ultimates  which  are  merely  universal. 


GOD:    THE   COMPLETE  INDIVIDUAL.  8 1 

obliterate  distinctions;  the  other  to  preserve  them.  The  one 
essentially  denies  multiplicity  and  development ;  the  other  affirms 
and  interprets  them.  The  one  is  reached  by  leaving  out  attri- 
butes; the  other,  by  increasing  determination.  The  one  repre- 
sents the  extinction  of  the  individual  life  and  value;  the  other, 
their  ideal  completion.  Such  is  the  difference  between  the 
concrete  individual  of  Green's  system  and  the  abstract  universal 
of  some  others.  It  is  comparatively  easy  to  reach  a  conclusion 
in  philosophy  by  ignoring  a  half  of  thought's  demands.  To 
take  our  stand  for  the  ultimate  unity  or  the  ultimate  variety  of 
life  is  to  solve  too  easily  the  gravest  of  philosophical  problems. 
Green's  mind  could  not  rest  after  such  a  meagre  sabbath  day's 
journey  but  was  compelled  to  press  on  to  that  goal  of  philo- 
sophical reflection — the  interpretation  of  the  paradox  of  the 
one  and  the  many.  This  is  an  ancient  and  ever  recurring  demand 
of  the  human  spirit  which  will  not  be  thrust  lightly  aside  by 
nominalism  on  the  one  hand,  or  realism  on  the  other. 

In  evaluating  any  system  of  philosophy  today  the  most  per- 
sistent question  is  "How  does  it  square  with  the  doctrine  and 
method  of  evolution?"  To  test  the  truth  of  any  theory  it  is 
necessary  to  see  whether  the  theory  takes  due  account  of  change 
and  leaves  room  for  real  development  or  whether  it  attempts  to 
define  reality  in  static  terms.  Such  a  test,  although  it  may 
appear  somewhat  artificial  when  applied  to  theories  developed 
before  men  were  stirred  by  the  new  conception  of  change  and 
development  which  grew  out  of  the  Darwinian  revolution  in 
biology,  cannot  be  out  of  place  when  dealing  with  a  philosophy 
written  so  recently  as  that  of  Green.  Green,  who  was  in  the 
very  midst  of  the  controversies  aroused  by  the  new  theories, 
was,  perhaps,  the  most  discriminating  and  independent  philo- 
sophical writer  of  the  time.  He  was  certainly  the  most  im- 
portant of  those  who  were  convinced  of  the  essential  limitations 
of  the  Darwinian  hypothesis  when  raised  to  the  rank  of  a  phi- 
losophy. His  well  known  opposition  to  the  evolutionary  phi- 
losophers of  his  day,  Spencer  in  particular,  has  led  many  serious 
students  to  discredit  Green's  philosophy  without  further  exami- 
nation on  the  ground  that  it  is  an  antiquated  semi-theological 


82  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

system  which  has  very  little  significance  for  the  modern  mind. 
Now,  however,  that  Spencer's  theories  are  no  longer  accepted 
without  qualification  in  evolutionary  philosophy,1  it  is  profitable 
to  turn  to  the  philosophy  of  his  most  discerning  contemporary 
and  philosophical  opponent.  What  was  Green's  attitude 
toward  evolution,  and  in  what  sense,  if  any,  does  his  own  phi- 
losophy provide  a  basis  for  genuine  change  or  growth? 

Beginning  with  the  examination  of  the  object,  and  proceeding 
through  a  consideration  of  the  spiritual  principle  in  man  and 
nature,  Green  has  never  lost  sight  of  process.  He  shows,  first, 
that  no  object  exists  in  isolation,  but  that  it  is  the  very  essence 
of  the  object  to  be  related  to  other  objects  in  a  common  world. 
We  make  a  mistake,  however,  if  we  suppose  that  the  relations 
of  an  object  are  so  simple  that  they  can  be  summed  up  in  a 
definition,  or  so  few  that  they  can  be  completely  tabulated  and 
quantified.  To  be  defined  is  the  very  soul  of  a  real  object, 
yet  an  object  is  always  infinitely  more  than  a  given  definition; 
in  Green's  language  "it  is  capable  of  infinitely  numerous  other 
determinations."2  Here  is  surely  room  for  process  or  growth 
of  some  kind,  and  it  is  just  at  this  point  that  his  theory  of  objec- 
tivity is  seen  to  have  a  direct  bearing  on  evolution.  According 
to  the  old  formal  logic,  the  object  falls  within  a  class,  that  class 
within  a  higher  class,  and  so  on  until  the  highest  class  or  genus 
is  reached.  The  highest  genus,  since  it  includes  everything  else 
within  it,  is  the  least  differentiated  and  the  most  abstract;  while 
the  individual  object  is  thought  of  as  there  in  a  fixed  or  given 
reality,  impaled  forever  by  a  name.  Green  reverses  all  this: 
in  his  philosophy  no  object  is  complete  or  finally  made,  but  it  is, 
in  the  true  sense  of  the  word,  in  the  making.  The  object  is 
universal  through  relations  which  are  inexhaustible  and  infinite 
so  that  it  is  never  quite  complete.  Green's  abandonment  of 
formal  logic  should  satisfy  the  most  radical,  but  he  does  not 
stop  here.  He  postulates  a  total  system  of  nature  as  a  basis 
for  change.  To  be  sure,  this  system  is  represented  as  an  ideal 

1  Cf.  Bergson's  criticism  of  Spencer.     Creative  Evolution,  pp.  188  and  363  ff.; 
also  J.  Royce,  Herbert  Spencer,  An  Estimate  and  Review;  also  J.  T.  Merz,  A  History 
of  European  Thought  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  Vol.  Ill,  p.  51. 

2  III,  56. 


GOD:    THE   COMPLETE  INDIVIDUAL.  83 

system,  but  it  is,  nevertheless,  said  to  be  a  "permanent  system." 
This  reveals  a  note  of  paradox.  The  question  at  once  arises, 
1  How  shall  we  harmonize  the  infinite  development  of  the  object 
with  a  permanent  system  of  objects?'  "For  reason,"  Green 
writes  "(and,  except  for  reason,  there  is  no  nature  at  all), 
nature  is  a  system  of  becoming,  which  rests  on  unchangeable 
conditions."1 

Is  it  possible  to  meet  this  dilemma  without  denying  the  reality 
either  of  the  permanence  or  of  the  change?  This  really  consti- 
tutes the  problem  of  modern  philosophy.  If  the  human  mind 
could  rest  satisfied  with  either  horn  of  the  dilemma,  the  problem 
would  have  been  solved  long  before  our  day  and  philosophers 
would  not  now  be  interested  in  it.  As  it  is,  every  philosophy 
which  pretends  to  rise  above  the  plane  of  unreflective  tradition 
must  cope  with  the  problem  anew.  Does  Green's  system  leave 
room  for  real  change  or  is  change  after  all  lost  in  permanence? 
In  the  language  of  Bosanquet:  "How  can  progress  be  all  included 
in,  and  belong  to  a  timeless  reality?"2 

It  is  impossible  to  answer  such  questions  except  by  reference 
to  a  subject  for  whom  these  relations  exist.  "  It  is,"  says  Green, 
"the  consciousness  of  possibilities  in  ourselves,  unrealized  but 
constantly  in  process  of  realization,  that  alone  enables  us  to 
read  the  idea  of  development  into  what  we  observe  of  natural 
life,  and  to  conceive  that  there  must  be  such  a  thing  as  a  plan 
of  the  world."3  The  very  condition  of  there  being  such  a  world, 
ordered  in  intelligible  ways,  is  the  consciousness  of  that  world. 
If  we  would  understand  Green's  notion  of  development,  there- 
fore, we  must  pass  from  the  world  of  objects  to  the  world  of 
subjects.  The  relation  of  objects  to  each  other  in  experience, 
whether  that  relation  be  one  of  development  or  of  simple  exist- 
ence, implies  a  principle  related  to  the  series  as  knower  to  known, 
but  not  itself  knowable  in  serial  or  quasi-serial  forms.  There  is 
a  unity  in  this  experience  taken  as  a  whole ;  but  it  is  not  another 
unit  over  and  above  the  unitary  objects  which  it  knows.  This 
is  the  true  individual ;  for  in  consciousness  the  many  and  the  one 

1 II,  74  and  75.     Cf.  Prolegomena,  sec.  18. 

2  The  Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Individual  (1913),  p.  71. 

3  Prolegomena,  sec.  186. 


84  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

are  intimately  and  organically  related  so  that  the  many  are  truly 
many  in  one.  Human  consciousness,  indeed,  like  the  object,  is 
incomplete.  It  is,  however,  growing  more  and  more  complete; 
and,  in  addition  to  the  mere  fact  of  growth  or  development,  it  is 
capable  of  setting  or  apprehending  its  own  completion  as  its  goal 
of  development.  The  goal  of  human  struggle  may  be  called 
indifferently  the  possible  self,  or  God.  Like  the  ideal  object  which 
is  a  complete  and  permanent  system  of  nature,  God  may  be 
said  to  be  the  complete  self,  the  eternal  self -consciousness, 
through  which  complete  nature  is  possible. 

Such  is  Green's  account  of  the  individual.  Individuality  is 
discoverable  in  the  remotest  germ  or  fragment  of  knowledge; 
there  is  no  abstract  particular.  On  the  other  hand,  reality  as  a 
whole  is  also  an  individual;  there  is  no  abstract  universal.  The 
individuality  of  the  object  is  the  same  in  kind  as  the  individuality 
of  a  system  of  nature ;  and  the  individuality  of  the  simplest  act 
of  knowledge  is  the  individuality  of  an  eternal  and  complete 
consciousness.  What  sort  of  evolution  does  such  a  plan  allow? 

In  the  first  place,  it  may  be  worth  while  to  point  out  that  for 
Green  evolution  cannot  be  defined  in  terms  of  motion  in  space. 
Change  of  place  is  not  development.  This  statement  may 
seem  so  obvious  that  there  is  danger  of  forgetting  that  attempts 
have  been  made  to  define  evolution  by  just  this  kind  of  change. 
Spencer  believes  that  the  problem  of  philosophy  is  to  find  "the 
law  of  the  continuous  redistribution  of  matter  and  motion,''1  and 
defines  evolution  as  "an  integration  of  matter  and  dissipation  of 
motion."2  Nevertheless,  it  has  now  become  a  commonplace 
that  no  amount  of  rearrangement  of  things  in  space  can  really 
be  a  process  of  evolution.3 

Secondly,  change  of  time  is  not  development.  This  statement 
is  perhaps  less  obviously  true,  but  none  the  less  really  so.  We 
get  into  the  habit  of  thinking  that  it  is  the  essential  characteristic 
of  evolution  to  consume  time.  Green  warns  us  against  an 
uncritical  acceptance  of  this  belief.  "We  must  be  on  our  guard," 
he  says,  "against  lapsing  into  the  notion  that  a  process  ad 

1  First  Principles,  sec.  92. 

2  First  Principles,  sec.  97. 

•  Cf.  Bergson,  Creative  Evolution,  pp.  363  ff. 


GOD:    THE   COMPLETE  INDIVIDUAL.  85 

infinitum,  a  process  not  relative  to  an  end,  can  be  a  process  of 
development  at  all."1  Simple  duration  is  probably  a  sine  qua 
non  of  any  real  development,  but  development  itself  cannot  be 
wholly  reduced  to  duration.  Even  space  could  be  shown  to  be 
an  indispensable  condition  of  all  development  since  it  is  actually 
in  a  space-time  world  that  our  term  'development'  has  any 
significance.  But,  on  the  other  hand,  development  is  infinitely 
more  than  any  mere  shifting  in  space  or  time.  It  must  be 
change  toward  a  more  valuable  or  higher  state.  There  is  an 
element  of  valuation,  therefore,  underlying  all  true  development, 
an  element  which  is  not  and  can  not  be  a  matter  of  spatial  or 
temporal  sequence.  Mere  duration  or  existence  prolonged  is 
no  better  than  existence.  The  truth  seems  to  be  that  develop- 
ment is  nothing  if  we  try  to  define  it  in  terms  of  a  simple  '  before ' 
and  'after.'  The  sequence  must  be,  or  is,  a  significant  before 
and  after.  The  burden  of  Green's  philosophy  is  that  significance 
is  the  universal  mark  of  reality.  Development,  like  every  other 
aspect  of  the  world,  must,  consequently,  have  a  meaning  and  a 
value  before  it  can  be  truly  real.  But  the  condition  of  all  value, 
as  we  have  previously  shown,  is  individuality  made  possible 
through  judgment  of  a  self-distinguishing  consciousness,  capable 
of  apprehending  and  striving  for  an  ideal.  It  is,  indeed,  not  at 
all  clear  how  any  change  could  take  place  without  this  guiding 
thread  of  an  ideal  end,  but  it  is  certain  that  orderly  change  (the 
very  essence  of  the  idea  of  evolution)  would  be  impossible  with- 
out it.  Progress  will,  therefore,  consist  in  the  constant  realiza- 
tion of  an  immanent  ideal. 

It  may  readily  be  admitted  that  Green's  philosophy  does  not 
lay  any  special  significance  on  the  reality  of  time.  If  evolution 
is  possible  only  on  a  theory  which  admits  that  time  is  an  ulti- 
mate and  independent  reality,  then  Green's  theory  does  not 
furnish  a  basis  for  evolution.  He  is  apparently  committed  to  the 
belief  that  the  total  and  permanent  system  of  relations  is  not  in 
time;  man  is  not  in  time;  God  is  not  in  time;  reality  itself  is  not 
in  time.  Notwithstanding  this,  he  continues  to  speak  confi- 
dently of  change  and  development.  The  explanation  of  this 

1  Prolegomena,  sec.  189. 


86  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

paradox  is  found  in  the  observation  that  none  of  the  terms  which 
Green  uses  in  discussing  development  are  names  for  objects  of 
knowledge.  The  whole  growth  takes  place  in  a  spiritual  world; 
from  the  single  fact  to  the  universal  system  of  facts  nothing  can 
be  pointed  out  as  'here'  or  'now.'  In  an  earlier  section  it  was 
shown  that  it  is  only  in  a  world  of  objects  that  the  categories  of 
time,  space,  cause,  et  cetera,  have  an  application.  '  This  thing  is 
behind  that,'  or  'the  sound  followed  the  blow,'  and  all  other 
similar  judgments  are  dependent  upon  these  mechanical  relations 
for  their  meaning;  but  the  meaning  of  one  of  them  is  not  related 
to  the  meaning  of  another  in  the  same  or  a  similar  way,  i.  e.,  no 
meaning  fills  more  space  than  another,  or  takes  more  time.  On 
the  other  hand,  what  ideas  or  meanings  lose  in  this  sort  of 
existential  reality  they  gain  in  a  dynamic  or  developmental 
character.  One  meaning  does  not  cause  another,  but  one 
meaning  grows  out  of  another  and  this  kind  of  growth  is  not 
dependent  upon  time  for  its  significance.  Briefly,  Green's 
contention  is  that  time  is  a  category  of  meaning,  not  meaning  a 
category  of  time.  Whatever  development  such  a  system  allows 
will  be  infinitely  more  than  a  temporal  sequence,  and  an  account 
of  that  development  will  be  infinitely  more  than  a  'natural 
history.'  This  kind  of  growth  cannot  be  registered  by  the  ticks 
of  a  clock,  but  must  be  told  in  stages  of  individuality.1  It  must 
be  recorded  in  terms  of  the  fragmentary  and  the  more  complete; 
the  germ  and  the  full  fruit.  The  spirit  does  not  grow  from  hour 
to  hour  but  from  less  to  greater  perfection,  not  from  particularity 
to  universality,  but  from  individuality  to  individuality.  Such  a 
development  is  best  observed  in  the  growth  of  the  human  soul.2 
We  have  seen  that  God  has  been  defined  as  the  ideally  com- 

1  The  first  part  of  this  conception  closely  resembles  Bergson's  notion  that  '  pure 
duration'  is  not  made  up  of  moments  of  time.     The  second  part,  however,  that 
development  consists  in  realizing  an  immanent  ideal,  or  that  the  germ  of  all  is 
in  the  merest  fragment  of  reality,  seems  to  be  foreign  to  Bergson's  philosophy. 

2  As  pointed  out  when  discussing  the  relation  of  consciousness  and  the  time 
series  (Chapter  IV),  Green  has  no  intention  of  abstracting  spirit  from  the  temporal 
order,  but  merely  insists  that  we  shall  distinguish  the  relation  of  spirit  to  time 
from  the  relations  in  time.     In  this  connection  he  applies  the  same  general  theory 
to  the  question  of  development.     We  must  learn  to  distinguish  the  concrete  relation 
of  growth  (which  undoubtedly  has  a  temporal  aspect)  and  the  abstract  relation  of 
a  mere  'before  and  after.' 


GOD:    THE   COMPLETE  INDIVIDUAL.  87 

plete  individual  correlative  with  a  system  of  reality  through 
which  all  individuality  is  made  possible.  God  is,  therefore, 
identical  in  principle,  but  infinitely  removed  in  degree  from  the 
finite  individual.  Such  an  interpretation  of  the  nature  of  God 
frees  Green  at  once  from  the  charge  of  holding  to  a  static  abso- 
lute. God  is  not  a  predetermined  goal  to  which  we  are  coming 
nearer  at  each  stage  until  at  some  far  off  future  time  we  shall 
have  attained  it.  God  is  in  the  process  of  being  realized,  in  the 
sense  that  the  ideal  of  the  artist  is  forever  being  realized,  although 
never  actually  realized  because  the  ideal  recedes  as  it  is  approxi- 
mated, or  better,  the  ideal  is  literally  created  in  the  process  of 
actualization.  "The  ideal  exists,"  writes  Green,  "in  his  [the 
artist's]  consciousness,  yet  not  in  its  full  reality,  for  if  it  did  it 
would  be  no  longer  an  ideal."1 

Our  struggle  is  a  permanent  process  of  becoming  complete 
individuals,  and  is  based  upon  an  ideally  complete  individual 
apprehended  by  the  finite  self.  It  is  to  be  noted  that  the  rela- 
tion of  the  actual  to  the  possible  is  in  this  case  not  quite  the  same 
as  it  is  in  the  partial  and  complete  object.  Such  a  process  as  we 
see  exhibited  in  the  growth  of  an  acorn  into  an  oak  will  hardly 
illustrate  self-realization  since  the  case  is  in  some  measure 
abstract,  both  of  the  terms  being  externalized.  We  cannot,  for 
example,  properly  say  that  an  acorn  is  forever  becoming  an 

1  III,  269.  Compare  with  this  view  Bergson's  remark  that  "no  one,  not  even 
the  artist,  could  have  foreseen  exactly  what  the  portrait  'would  be,  for  to  predict 
it  would  have  been  to  produce  it  before  it  was  produced — an  absurd  hypothesis 
which  is  its  own  refutation.  Even  so  with  regard  to  the  moments  of  our  life,  of 
which  we  are  the  artisans.  Each  of  them  is  a  kind  of  creation.  And  just  as  the 
talent  of  the  painter  is  formed  or  deformed — in  any  case,  is  modified — under  the 
very  influence  of  the  works  he  produces,  so  each  of  our  states,  at  the  moment  of  its 
issue,  modifies  our  personality,  being  indeed  the  new  form  that  we  are  just  assum- 
ing." (Creative  Evolution,  p.  6.)  There  is  this  difference,  however,  between 
Green  and  Bergson:  Bergson  recognizes  the  actual  incompleteness  of  any  judg- 
ment just  as  Green  does,  but  from  this  fact  concludes  that  judgment  must  be  cast 
aside,  knowledge  abandoned,  and  intuition  substituted  for  it.  By  intuition  he 
hopes  to  grasp  that  which  for  knowledge  is  an  ideal.  Green,  on  the  other  hand, 
while  holding  that  the  actual  nature  of  ultimate  reality  is  never  quite  grasped  by 
knowledge,  still  holds  that  knowledge,  or  judgment,  is  the  only  means  we  have  of 
grasping  the  ultimate.  Indeed,  it  is  just  this  paradox  which,  according  to  Green, 
constitutes  the  significance  of  consciousness.  The  ultimate  is  truly  forever  beyond, 
but  beyond  as  an  ideal  is  forever  beyond  conscious  attainment.  As  the  ideal 
makes  the  struggle  significant,  so  the  ideal  infinite  is  the  basis  of  finite  valuation. 


88  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

oak  but  never  becomes  one,  because  the  ideal  oak  is  one  set  up 
by  an  agency  other  than  the  acorn  itself.  "The  acorn,"  says 
Green,  "is  in  possibility  identical  with  the  oak,  but  the  oak  is 
nothing  to  the  acorn.  That  is,  the  acorn  has  no  consciousness 
which  its  virtual  identity  with  the  oak  affects.  The  identity 
exists,  not  for  it,  but  for  a  consciousness  to  which  oak  and  acorn 
are  alike  relative.  But  in  the  process  constituting  the  moral 
life,  .  .  .  the  germ  and  the  development,  the  possibility  and 
its  actualization,  are  one  and  the  same  consciousness  of  self. 
That  in  virtue  of  which  I  am  I,  and  can  in  consequence  so  set 
before  myself  the  realization  of  my  own  possibilities  as  to  be  a 
moral  agent,  is  that  in  virtue  of  which  I  am  one  with  God."1 

Such  a  system  of  philosophy  offers  the  only  true  basis  for  a 
genuine  evolution  because  the  ideal  is  dynamic.  The  world 
in  its  totality  is  not  a  closed  system.  We  cannot  predict  the 
future  in  detail.  Although  we  know  in  general  that  it  will  be 
intelligible,  we  do  not  know  the  exact  terms  in  which  its  intel- 
ligibility will  appear. 

It  is  a  singular  fact  that  the  two  most  insistent  criticisms 
of  Green's  philosophy  cancel  each  other.  On  the  one  hand,  the 
objection  is  raised  that  his  philosophy  allows  no  room  for  change; 
and  on  the  other  hand,  that  the  process  is  interminable.  That 
God  is  a  fixed  goal  has  already  been  sufficiently  refuted  by  the 
foregoing  account  of  the  nature  of  an  ideal.  The  ideal  is  that 
for  which  we  ever  strive  but  at  which  we  never  arrive.  It  is 
such  a  notion  of  an  eternal  process  to  which  the  second  objection 
is  raised.  "Why  a  completely  realized  self  should  think  it 
worth  while,"  says  Professor  Dewey,  "to  duplicate  itself  in  an 
unrealized,  or  relatively  empty,  self,  how  it  could  possibly  do 
this  even  if  it  were  thought  worth  while,  and  why  after  the  com- 
plete self  had  produced  the  incomplete  self,  it  should  do  so  under 
conditions  rendering  impossible  (seemingly  eternally  so)  any 
adequate  approach  of  the  incomplete  self  to  its  own  complete- 
ness .  .  .  should  make  us  wary  of  the  conception."2  If  we  are 

1  III,  226.     Cf.  especially  Prolegomena,  sec.  187. 

2  Philosophical  Review,  II,  654.     If  our  interpretation  is  correct  Green  would 
be  the  first  to  agree  with  Professor  Dewey 's  conclusion  expressed  at  the  close  of  the 
article  cited.     "The  fixed  ideal  is  an  distinctly  the  bane  of  ethical  science  today 


GOD:    THE  COMPLETE  INDIVIDUAL.  89 

to  understand  that  the  'Why?',  to  which  the  critic  is  seeking  an 
answer,  is  synonymous  with  the  question  "Why  is  the  universe 
as  it  is?  ",  no  one  can  hope  to  answer  him.  Green,  for  one,  does 
not  attempt  such  a  demonstration.1  In  the  words  of  Bosanquet, 
"All  explanation  is  within  the  universe,  not  of  it."2  But  if, 
on  the  other  hand,  the  critic  is  complaining  because  Green  did 
not  set  up  a  static  goal,  'some  far  off  divine  event,'  which  might 
one  day  be  reached,  he  is  unconsciously  crediting  Green  with  the 
only  basis  for  a  true  theory  of  development.  Green's  strength 
is  shown  in  his  refusal  to  adopt  this  type  of  explanation. 

This  result  is  unintelligible  to  a  mechanical  or  naturalistic 
philosophy,  which  moves  always  within  the  most  superficial 
aspect  of  the  world  of  objectivity.  In  the  world  of  objects  we 
know  that  a  goal  is  set  up  at  the  end  of  a  course  and  that  the 
runners  approach  it  until  they  arrive,  or  pass  beyond  it.3  This 
naive  view  of  reality  can  only  be  overcome  by  the  way  of  some 
such  philosophy  of  the  individual  as  Green  has  given.  The 
shell  of  objectivity  must  be  pierced  to  the  very  soul  and  then 
mechanism  will  be  seen  to  rest  on  individuality.  In  reality 
itself  the  start  and  the  goal  and  the  runner  are  all  included,  but 
included  in  such  a  way  as  to  preserve  their  severalty.  There 

as  the  fixed  universe  of  mediaevalism  was  the  bane  of  the  natural  science  of  the 
Renascence."  (P.  664.  Italics  mine.)  It  is  but  fair  to  say  that  in  all  of  Green's 
talk  of  ideals  he  seems  nowhere  to  refer  to  a  fixed  ideal.  Perhaps  he  did  not  recog- 
nize that  there  could  be  such  an  ideal. 

1  Cf.  Prolegomena,  sec.  82. 

2  Logic  (second  edition),  I,  137. 

3  Here  lies  the  fallacy  of  likening  life  to  a  game  or  a  race  where  the  goal  may 
actually  be  reached.     On  the  other  hand,  we  are  not  assisted  by  supposing  the  goal 
to  be  a  sort  of  mobile  will-o'-the-wisp  which  goes  on  before  us  into  the  surrounding 
darkness,  because  we  are  still  entangled  with  mechanical  metaphors.     Caird  has 
better  expressed  the  nature  of  the  struggle;  "It  is  true  that  'the  margin'  of  know- 
ledge '  fades  forever  and  forever  as  we  move ' ;  but,  if  we  might  correct  the  metaphor, 
it  fades  not  before  us  merely,  but  also  into  us.     We  are  not  condemned  to  chase  a 
phantom  which  continually  flies  before  us,  so  that  we  are  as  near  to  it  at  first  as  at 
last.     Rather,  we  are  pursuing  a  course  of  self-development  in  which  we  are  con- 
tinually realizing  more  deeply  and  fully  what  the  world,  the  object  of  all  our  thought 
and  action,  is,  and  what  we  are,  who  think  and  act  upon  it;  and  in  which,  by  neces- 
sary consequence,  we  are  continually  learning  more  of  God,  who  is  the  ultimate 
unity  of  our  own  life  and  of  the  life  of  the  world."     (The  Evolution  of  Religion,  Vol. 
It  pp.  139-140.)     We  make  our  own  goal;  we  seek  it;  -we  fail  to  grasp  it;  not  because 
it  eludes  our  grasp,  but  because  we  despise  it  in  the  light  of  another. 


90  INDIVIDUALITY  IN  PHILOSOPHY  OF  GREEN. 

is  no  better  characterization  of  reality  than  in  terms  of  indi- 
viduality. 

Whatever  process  there  is  in  reality  must,  therefore,  be  an 
internal  process  of  concretion;  the  very  process,  exhibited  in 
the  growth  of  individuality  in  which  the  finite  individual,  in 
being  able  to  know,  and  to  will  an  end,  is  already,  in  principle, 
one  with  the  infinite  individual.  This  is  a  significant  change. 
Moreover,  if  the  process  is  to  remain  significant  the  goal  must 
remain  beyond  the  present  grasp.  The  key  to  Green's  philosophy 
is  found  in  the  significance  of  individuality  made  possible  in  a 
world  of  struggle  for  completion. 


INDEX 


Actual  and  possible,  77  ff. 
Aristotle,  21  ff. 

Baldwin,  J.  M.,  47  «.,  20  n. 

Balfour,  A.  J..  ^  n.,  68  n. 

Barratt,  Alfred,  i6n. 

Bergson,  Henri,  46  w.,  47  n.,  48  n.,  52  w., 

61,  62  «.,  63,  73  «.,  82  «.,  84  n.,  86  n., 

87  n. 

Berkeley,  George,  24  ff,  79  w. 
Bosanquet,    B.,    23,    38  n.,    41  n.,    42, 

57  w.,  59  n.,  83,  89. 

Bradley,  F.  H.,  16  w.,  28,  41  n.,  52  «., 

58  w. 


Edward,  2  n.,  4  w.,  73-74  w.,  77. 

89  «. 

Caird,  John,  n. 
Causality,  60  ff. 
Consciousness,  44  ff.,  60  ff.,  74-  (See 

SfftytfCf.) 
Creation,  63  ff. 

Darwin,  Charles,  2,  Si. 
Datum.     (See  Fact.) 
Descartes,  Rene,  46,  47  n. 
Dewey,  John,  So,  88. 

Eastwood,  A.,  19  w. 
Empiricism,  weakness  of,  8. 
Evolution,  2,  55  ff.,  81  ff. 
Experience,  10. 

Fact,  nature  of,  3  ff.;  and  fancy,   27; 

and  judgment,  38  ff. 
Fairbrother,  W.  H.,  5. 
Fichte,  J.  G.,  47  n. 
Fullerton,  G.  S.,  5  n. 

God,  the  complete  individual,  67  ff.;  and 
nature,  72;  and  man,  74  ff.;  Berkeley's 
conception  of,  79  ff. 

Green,  T.  H.,  not  a  psychologist,  3ff.; 
method  of,  9  ff.;  problem  of,  2  ff. 

Haldane,  R.  B.,  4  n. 

Haldar,  H.,  19  n. 

Hegel,  G.  W.  F.,  9  ff.,  17,  51  n.,  65,  76  n. 

Hume,  David,  8  ff.,  16,  18,  24,  48  ff. 

Individual  denned,  iv,  33. 

Johnson,  R.  B.  C.,  10  n.,  19  w. 

Judgment,  identified  with  meaning, 
36  ff  .  ;  simplest  component  of  knowl- 
edge, 38ff.;  process  of  individualiza- 
tion,  39  ff.;  germ  of  knowledge,  40  ff.; 
hypothetical  character  of,  41  ff- 


Kant,  /.,  method  of,  2  ff.,  9  ff. 

Locke,  John,  i,  14  ff.,  24,  31,  39,  46,  50; 

method  of,  8  ff. 
Logic,  formal,  31. 

Meaning,  35  ff. 
Merz,  J.  T.,  82  n. 
Metaphysics,  problem  of,  2  ff. 
Method,  Green's  objective,  12. 

Nature,  Green's  definition  of,  12. 
Nettleship,  R.  L.,  62  w. 

Object,  individuality  of,  i8ff.;  consti- 
tuted by  relations,  20  ff.;  of  sense 
versus  object  of  knowledge,  21  ff. 

Pattison,  Mark,  16  n. 

Psychology,  problem  of,  3  ff.;  method 

of,  8ff.;  facts  of,  not  questioned  by 

Green,  3. 

Real,    not   distinguished   from   unreal, 

27  ff. 

Reality,  and  consciousness,  I3ff.;  and 

knowledge,  2t. 
Reid,  Thomas,  23. 
Ritchie,  D.  G.,  13,  58. 
Royce,  Josiah,  47  n.,  82  n. 

Scepticism,   18. 

Science,    field    of,    distinguished    from 

philosophy,  3  f. 
Sensation,  mere  sensation  does  not  exist, 

28  ff. 

Seth,  Andrew,  4  n.,  64  n.,  65. 

Sidgwick,  H.,  9  n. 

Space,  50  ff. 

Spencer,  H.,  Si  ff. 

Spinoza,  51  n.,  62  n. 

Spiritual  Principle,  12,  44. 

Stout,  G.  F.,  7  «. 

Sturt,  Henry,  5  ff. 

Subject,  individuality  of,  46  ff.,  62  ff. 

Subjectivism,  6  ff.,  23  ff. 

Substance,  50  ff. 

Taylor,  A.  £.,  7  n.,  56  ff. 

Time,  53  ff. 

Thing-in-itself,  13  ff. 

Thought,  false  conception  of,  29  ff. 

Wallace,  William,  21. 
Ward,  James,  47  n. 
Watson,  John,  74  n. 


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